Difference between revisions of "Gil Dawes"
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| − | '''Gil Dawes''' is an [[Iowa]] activist. | + | {{TOCnestleft}} |
| + | Rev. '''Gil Dawes''' is an [[Iowa]] activist. | ||
==Anti-war protest== | ==Anti-war protest== | ||
Revision as of 17:30, 22 October 2015
Template:TOCnestleft Rev. Gil Dawes is an Iowa activist.
Anti-war protest
On Saturday, March 22, 2003, approximately 50 anti-war protestors gathers at the Iowa National Guard Headquarters, Hq STARC, in Johnston, IA. They delivered the attached statement asking all of our brothers and sisters in the Iowa National Guard, who are participating in this war against the people of Iraq, to stop fighting and return home!
The protestors felt a legal and moral responsibility to raise a clear and strong voice of warning that this war is criminal and immoral. They planned to occupy the facility until these soldiers returned home. However, the sixteen line-crossers were arrested by county authorities and taken to the Polk County jail. They were all charged with criminal trespass. Fifteen were released on their promise to return for a court hearing. One woman chose to spend the night in jail so that she could appear in court Sunday morning. She pled guilty and was released with time served.
Most of the others will appear in court on March 31, others at a later date. Some plan to pled guilty and one will pled no contest. Others plan to pled not guilty and will be represented at trial by Sally Frank, a professor at Drake University law school and National Lawyers Guild.
Below a list of those who got arrested.
- Fr Frank Cordaro, 52 yrs, Des Moines IA (Catholic Worker)
- Fran Fuller, 54 yrs. Des Moines IA
- Carla Dawson, 37 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Rev Gil Dawes, 69 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Jim Johnson, 59 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Jane Magers, 71 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Elton Davis, 41 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Brian Terrell, 46 yrs, Maloy IA
- Marian Solomon, 72 yrs, Ames IA
- Steve Wieland, 18 yrs, Mt Vernon IA
- Jeanne K. Firth, 18 yrs, Mt Vernon IA
- Sonya Thompson, 21 yrs, Mt Vernon IA
- Violet Blosser, 22 yrs, Northfield MN
- Mike Schorsch, 20 yrs, Northfield MN
- Bill Basinger, 75 yrs, Des Moines IA
- Carolyn Uhlenhake Waker, Des Moines IA[1]
Communist Party religious conference
“The word of God and communism are hand in hand,” said Diana Sowry, a school bus driver from Ashtabula County, Ohio. She was one of a group of clergy and lay people participating in a conference on religion sponsored by the Communist Party USA in Des Moines Iowa April 15-16, 2005.
Conference sessions dealt with the history of religion and Marxism, the religious right, coalition building, and work in local churches and denominational and ecumenical groups.
In the session on work in local churches, the Rev. Gil Dawes, a retired volunteer pastor at Trinity Methodist Church in Des Moines, emphasized that grassroots progressive religious activism has deep historical roots, and has to be re-energized today. “That’s where the right is way ahead of us,” he said.
Dawes, a second-generation Methodist minister, draws inspiration from the circuit-rider preachers who traveled through small towns and rural areas to teach a social gospel. He teaches Bible study classes with a materialist interpretation that lets ordinary people see how their problems are connected to larger political and economic forces.
“People are repressed about their own pain,” he said, “but when I choose a story that’s 3,000 years old, that’s far enough in the past. When I start to unravel that story, people break out of that repression.” They relate stories of farms lost and families shattered by hard times.
“People suffering will become leaders if they have a chance to put it together with other people,” Dawes said. This kind of Bible study helped turn one congregation from fundamentalist to one of the most progressive, he said.
In the session on Marx and religion, Paul Nelson, a Lutheran minister who teaches at a community college in Iowa, disputed the idea that Marx opposed all religion. What Marx denounced was an “illusory” form of religion that served as “ideological cover for the exercise of aristocratic economic and political power,” Nelson said. Like the reactionary state religion in 19th century Germany, today “we see religion twisted and turned and used to discipline people,” he said. [2]