Frida Berrigan
Frida Berrigan, a columnist for WagingNonviolence.org, serves on the board of the War Resisters League and organizes with Witness Against Torture.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, May 17, 2018 50 Years Later, the Spirit of the Catonsville Nine Lives On It was a big moment. More than a hundred people watched as a college professor held one end of a heavy vinyl cover, helping an 88-year-old woman, pull it from the top of a tall metal sign. Together, they unveiled a familiar looking historic marker — the kind that draws attention to battlefields... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 16, 2018 Gunning Down the Easter Bunny: On the Weaponization of Everyday Life Guns. In a country with more than 300 million of them, a country that’s recently been swept up in a round of protests over the endless killing sprees they permit, you’d think I might have had more experience with them. As it happens, I’ve held a gun only once in my life. I even fired it. I was in... Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 07, 2018 How Do You Tell the Kids that Grandma is in Jail for Resisting Nuclear Weapons? “Our grandma is in jail,” Madeline tells a woman wrestling a shopping cart at Target. “She went over a war fence and tried to make peace,” Seamus adds helpfully. “They arrested her, and she is in jail now.” “Where?” the woman asks, looking from them to me in disbelief and maybe pity. “We don’t... Read more |
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Views Monday, January 08, 2018 'Do Kids Die, Mom?: Parenting in a World on Fire As a mother and an activist, here’s what I’ve concluded as 2018 begins: it’s getting harder and harder to think about the future -- at least in that soaring Whitney Houston fashion. You know the song: “I believe the children are our future, teach them well and let them lead the way...” These days,... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 24, 2017 How Can We Turn Military Spending into a Budget for the People? Connecticut is the only state in the union that does not have a budget, and the state’s bills are being paid in emergency supplementals — or going past due. The state is budget-less, so my town of New London — one of its smaller urban communities — doesn’t have a budget either. That means a hiring... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, July 11, 2017 Feeling Not Quite So Hopeless in a World on the Skids In the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s 1984 soared onto bestseller lists , as did Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale , which also hit TV screens in a storm of publicity. Zombies, fascists, and predators of every sort are now stalking... Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 08, 2017 Why Tax Resistance Under Trump Needs Its Antiwar Edge There have always been fights about taxes — stretching back to the crates of over-taxed tea tossed into the Boston Harbor and a thoughtful man’s night in jail for refusing to pay taxes in the slave-holding state of Massachusetts. This country’s long history of tax resistance stretches from the... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 14, 2017 Preparing for the Long Haul Under the Trump Administration By now, my inchoate hopes that our nation will just wake up from the bad dream of Trump — or even more remotely that he’ll be impeached by a radicalized Congress — have turned to dust and floated away. He seems here to stay, and I need to figure out how to stay human, stay upright, with him in the... Read more |
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Views Thursday, February 16, 2017 Loving America and Resisting Trump: The New Patriotism So reality has inexorably, inescapably penetrated my life. It didn’t take long. Yes, Donald Trump is actually the president of the United States. In that guise, in just his first weeks in office, he’s already declared war on language, on loving, on people who are different from him -- on the kind... Read more |
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Views Saturday, December 24, 2016 Why My Family Turns Our Christmas Tree Into a Political Statement I picked up a call from an unfamiliar local number. It was someone organizing to give toys to needy families. “We picked your family,” she said happily. I stumbled and stuttered over myself a little as I tried to be gracious while also clear: We do not need or want the beautifully wrapped, ready-... Read more |