Crossing Lines

A week before his trial in late January, Donte flew back to Georgia. The SOA Watch group had offered a week of support and counseling, and Donte wanted to be around people telling him he'd done the right thing. His parents, who'd earlier said they might not come, arrived the day before the trial.

Donte, accompanied by a pro bono attorney, was in the first group to go before U.S. Magistrate G. Mallon Faircloth on Monday, January 30. Before they went in, he spoke outside the courtroom. His words, captured on audiotape and matched to a slide show by the SOA Watch group (view it here), are emotional and affecting. "As a young person, I feel worn. My heart is heavy with all the names of crosses that we're bearing of actual people…

"The SOA is not just a place. It's a spirit of violence and militarism that claims millions of victims' lives every day, and until each of us says 'No more,' and until each of us stands up, it will continue to happen and people will continue to be harassed and insulted and tortured and killed across the world. Nunca más. Peace."

In court, Donte read another, lengthier statement. His parents had tried to stop him, sure that it would jeopardize his chances with the judge. He wouldn't let them see it ahead of time. The judge issued his sentence. Donte could hear his mother's quavering voice in the background, but he wouldn't look back. He paid a self-reporting fee and left.

Other defendants fared little better. The priest who encouraged him in detox, Father Vitale, age 73, was sentenced to six months in prison. An 81-year-old, Delmar Schwaller from Appleton, Wisconsin, got two months. For nuns and working people alike, it was all the same.

A crowd gathered to cheer the defendants as they came out. "My mother didn't want any part of that," Donte says. They went out a back way, grabbed a cab and went on to the motel and airport. His parents had always taught him to stand up for himself and to treat other people fairly, Donte says. They just hadn't bargained for this.

Georgetown professor Elizabeth Velez has been teaching there for 20 years. Her sense of today's times is that most students are focused on their studies, and she appreciates this because "they know it's tough out there when they graduate."

She can't speak for the school or its decision to suspend Donte. She had no part in that. But she is willing to talk about Donte, the student, whom she had in her fall feminist theory class. "I think that he is brilliant…He is incredibly insightful, thoughtful and has the potential to be an extraordinary student."

As a parent herself, she understands Donte's parents' anger but hopes they realize the good he is doing as well. "I'm not exactly comparing him to Martin Luther King, but I am saying that he is in that tradition of civil disobedience, and civil disobedience is a big American tradition to how we came about as a country."

As for Donte at this stage, he is busy readying himself for prison. "I think I'll be okay. I think I have to believe that." In fact, he's looking on this as a chance to advance his knowledge, to become involved in prison activism.

"I can learn a lot about the way the system works. As a black man and a queer, that's really important. The chance of me facing violence is a lot more than other people crossing the line."

He's now decided that when he gets out, he may take some college classes locally and get a part-time job. And he wants to return to Georgetown after all. There's unfinished business there, and he says that he's the only student who knows the staff by name.

He doesn't know what he'll do in the future. It might be community organizing or working for the National Organization for Women. It may change, he says. His parents want him to go to law school, and he sees the power in that.

In his statement to the court, Donte concluded with what he says Father Vitale told him in the detox cell. "Every time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring; those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."

Donte says he was emboldened by that comment. It is, of course, both an incredibly uplifting and terrifying sentiment filled with promised hardship. On the one hand, the impulse is to say to Donte to stop, be safe, wait. On the other, it is the principled, the defiant, the courageous people like Donte -- who seem in fewer supply every day -- who prompt the changes of conscience that most of us in mainstream America will eventually accept, at little cost to ourselves.

Donte's grandmother calls him daily. His parents remain angry and worried. It is impossible to tell now if Donte possesses greatness or just great foolhardy passion.