On Being Raised by Radicals and Growing into Rebellious Motherhood
by Frida Berrigan
OR Books (2014)
193 pages
Available in paperback and online
NOTE: Frida Berrigan has been out of the news for a while, but recently she wrote a piece on the Covid-19 crisis for TomDispatch.a few years ago I reviewed her book about growing up in a radical household, Dad a former priest and Mum a former Nun. It's a great read and totally relevant to our times.
Our Father, Who Art in Prison
By John Kendall Hawkins
Partly a memoir on being raised in a communal environment, partly a desideratum on child-rearing in an era of conspicuous consumption and endless war, Frida Berrigan's It Runs In The Family is marvelous little book that is full of guileless reminiscing and plain-spoken observations about the challenges of raising children to be conscientious and "morally cheerful" in the world, while still nurturing their creativity and the need to discover the world for themselves.
Frida is the oldest daughter of former priest Phillip Berrigan and former nun Elizabeth McAlister, who met at a funeral in 1966, fell in love, got married, and proceed to be excommunicated by the Catholic church. The pair were virtual legends in the late 60s for their many determined anti-war activities, which included throwing blood at the Pentagon in protest of the carnage in Viet Nam, an act with powerful sacramental symbolism attached to it that stirred the entire Catholic community. Phillip's most famous protest came in 1968 when he and eight others, including his brother Daniel, another ex-priest, trespassed on a selective service facility in Pennsylvania and poured blood on and burned draft records, in an act that literally saved lives. They became renowned as the Catonsville Nine.
So committed to resistance to the war were the Berrigan brothers and Frida's mother, that they were spending a great deal of time serving prison sentences. And this is perhaps the most fascinating aspect of It Runs In The Family how the Berrigans managed to continue raising their children (Frida and her brother) while continuing to protest and be imprisoned. What they did was start up Jonah House, a kind of shifting commune devoted to non-violence and peace where other protesters with children converged and they took turns looking after each other's children while resisters were in jail. Jonah House is still vibrant today.
In a marvelous quotation from her parents' book, The Time's Discipline, Frida lays down, without comment, a sense of her parents' priorities, with respect to her coming into the world: "Throughout Lent of that year, [we] mounted a series of direct actions connecting the war in Indochina with North America's support of tyrants abroad and with the war against the poor at home. [Chilean president Salvador] Allende had been assassinated with CIA and NSA support. This we exposed in the only demonstration held at NSA headquarters. Holy Week brought the first action in which actors faced serious consequences (longer jail terms) at the Vietnamese Overseas Procurement Office. Holy Week also brought the birth of Frida Berrigan, our first daughter."
In what is surely unique in the annals of growing up, Frida describes the prison absences thusly: "My mom and dad estimated that they spent eleven years of their twenty-nine-year marriage separated by prison. We celebrated birthdays, graduations, and other milestones in prison visiting rooms. A lot of our family communication happened through letters." Eventually, Phillip and Elizabeth managed to stagger their jailings so that one of them was always caretaking at home.
Frida doesn't pretend that this situation always pleased her; indeed, she relates that sometimes she hated the absence of her parents, although, she says, being around other morally likeminded adults in their absence, who also went to jail, made her appreciate her parents' integrity and commitment to just causes. Even now, as a mother herself, she says of her parents, "I have so much to learn from my parents about how to listen to the still small voice of conscience within amid the cacophony of children."
A central concern of the book, with respect to child-rearing, is summed up in a series of questions Frida poses to herself: "What do we teach children by our words and actions, and what do we want children to learn? How can I be a parent who is learning alongside my marvelous child rather than imposing my vision of the world on her little shoulders? How can I be a parent who makes the world safe, beautiful, and governed by some logic, while still being honest about its morass of problems and our responsibility for all of it?" These are all core questions that any parents of conscience struggle with.
Frida helped found Witness Against Torture, and activist campaign to shut down the activities of the US military prison at Guantanamo, Cuba, where horrific tales of torture and other extreme abuses have now been documented and publicly revealed. In 2005, Frida led 25 protesters to the gates of Guantanamo, and hoped to gain entry, only to be rebuffed.
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