BishopAccountability.org
	September Begins with 2 Guerrilla Tactics for the Coming Year. Plus, It Was Not a Hiatus, It Was Self Imposed Lockdown By Kay Ebeling City of Angels September 3, 2008 http://cityofangels4.blogspot.com/2008/09/september-starts-with-2-guerrilla.html Tues. August 12, I cut off the blog for a few weeks, or else I would have self destructed, lashing out and trashing every person and every organization I’ve encountered in the last year. Apparently going back to the scene of the crime by visiting your perpetrator church, as we did here last July, can affect you. After hitting Reply To All on several emails and alienating about 25 people, I could see I had to let the rage pass before I said anything more in public. So I sat tight as mainstream journalists missed the story over and over again, for example, when attorneys in both California and Illinois found ways to get around statutes of limitations for child sex crimes. (We will run both those stories here at City of Angels Network this month.) From this dark internal place I opened an email from Rick Springer, a link to NBC5 in Chicago with Francis Cardinal George talking to reporters about the Chicago settlements saying: “In 2006 I invited anyone who had been abused by a priest to come forward. I promised we would continue to settle cases no matter when they occurred or how far back they occurred and even if the perpetrator priest is deceased.” -- I sputtered - Who the- what the- and within seconds was screaming into the voicemail of Matt Hunnicutt, head of Victim Assistance in Chicago: “How come in all the times I called the Chicago Archdiocese asking for help in the past year, no one mentioned these settlements in progress, no one said the cardinal wants to settle cases no matter how far back they occurred. All Victims Assistance ever gave me was a phone number for a therapist in LA. A 310 phone number! How am I supposed to pay for a therapist in the 310 area code. Who decides who gets a settlement and who doesn't, and what are the rest of us supposed to do, just live with all this damage? Huh? Huh? Snarrrll.” Funny thing is he called me back. More on my ongoing conversation with the Chicago Archdiocese in an upcoming post here at City of Angels Network. The blog is back with two guerrilla tactics to plan the next year. Maybe we can talk them over in person at Hope in the Heartland in Wichita, Kansas, October 10-11. This is the third year Janet Patterson has put this conference together with the focus on survivors interacting with each other, and on food. Friday night is Open Mike Night, with pizza. Saturday starts with a buffet breakfast and features a long lunch -- A time and a place for us to eat and to actually confer, all included with your $25 dollars. For more information about Hope in the Heartland, Oct 10 and 11 in Wichita write to: snapkansas@hotmail.com City of Angels Guerrilla Tactic One: A Document Dump - On one coordinated day, in early 2009 when the new US Congress is seated and settled, City of Angels readers print out as many documents as possible. Then in a coordinated effort, we'll all arrive at our local congressional offices, the one a few miles from your home -- and all of us DUMP THE DOCUMENTS on their desks, a big overwhelming unmanageable pile of documents -- and say: “We demand congressional hearings into conspiracy and other federal crimes committed by the Catholic Church that caused thousands of children to be ceremonially raped in United States Catholic churches in the last 75 years . “We demand a federal level investigation.” Hopefully the press will be there with us as we dump documents on their desks. Guerrilla Tactic Two: Petitions of the People They only do it in some Catholic churches at some masses but at that point before Communion where people in the pews call out for prayer for one thing in particular, you call out loud, “For the Crime victims living with PTSD from being raped by pedophile priests.” The parishioners in the pews are then supposed to repeat, “Lord hear our prayer.” We tried it in Bartlett, Illinois, last July at St. Peter Damian Church’s weekday morning Mass, and my calling out caused the entire chapel to come to a standstill, silence for several long seconds, lots of suddenly tense backs in front of me. It would be more effective to keep going back to mass and doing it over and over again. This to me is a truly underground grass roots type guerrilla tactic. Take a friend or two if you are scared and go to a church that does petitions of the people during Mass, and when you hear them start going “Lord hear our prayer” you call out “For the church to finally confess its felonies” or “For Congressional hearings into crimes committed by bishops” or something along those lines. In each case, the goal is a criminal investigation - on a Federal level - because the pedophile priest epidemic spread through every diocese, almost every parish.
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