The Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones testifying at the Mother's Day Five trial

“Despair is not an option; and genocide requires courage and resistance,” so testified UCC PIN steering committee member the Rev. Dave Grishaw-Jones during a two-hour trial in a New Hampshire district court October 29. Dave, pastor of the Community Church of Durham, was one of five defendants, the “Mother’s Day Five,” charged with criminal trespass for their nonviolent sit-in at the office of their member of Congress Rep. Chris Pappas last May.  After numerous attempts, with no response, to communicate with Rep. Pappas about the U.S. government’s complicity in funding Israel’s genocide, the group felt called, indeed compelled, to intensify their efforts and to engage in civil disobedience, knowingly risking arrest. To read news coverage of their trial, go here.

“I think of our civil disobedience as confessional,’ said Dave, reflecting on the group’s witness, “Somebody, somewhere has to confess American complicity in genocide and apartheid. . . active complicity, driven by corporate greed and anti-Arab racism. I’m a part of that complicity-system. And I want to confess that, repent, turn from it. Our civil disobedience is not an act of heroism or individual merit; it’s a collaborative project of creative nonviolence, confession and solidarity. I confess. I move to stand in a different space, with those who suffer. And I work then to enact a world beyond genocide and war, a world of communion and justice.”

As we prepare for the peril that a second Trump administration threatens here at home, in Palestine, and globally, we already know, at a cellular level, that we will need to intensify our efforts to “enact a world beyond genocide and war, a world of communion and justice.” May resistance become our modus operandi, and insistence on nonviolent love and solidarity be our mantra. And may the persistent and faithful witness of those like the Mother’s Day Five provide inspiration. 

This excerpt is from the UCCPIN November 2024 E-Newsletter. To view the full newsletter, click here: UCCPIN November 2024 E-Newsletter.