And Speaking of Texas Women

From the Austin Statesman reprinted in Common Dreams

Click on the link for the photo.

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Diane Baker's voice was barely audible above the rumble of the trash can she pushed down the sidewalk. But her actions tended to speak louder, anyway.

Four months ago, Baker was one of 71 people arrested during a protest in Washington for crossing a police line to sit on the steps of a Senate office building.


Diane Baker, who has a degenerative muscle condition, had to work 8 hours in freezing weather. Photo:Emily J. Reynolds. COX WASHINGTON BUREAU
As punishment, the 60-year-old was sentenced to sweep the streets of the nation's capital for eight cold, blustery hours Tuesday.

"I'm a rather fragile, small woman," said Baker, a hospice chaplain at United Church of Christ in Dallas. "Being a minister, I offered to do counseling, but this is what they gave me."

Baker, a mother of four and grandmother of two, suffers from myoclonic epilepsy, a degenerative muscle condition that causes her voice to quiver and hands to shake. As she signed in to begin her community service, she struggled to write her name.

With morning temperatures in Washington in the high 20s, Baker prepared for the cold as if a protest could start any minute.

She wore 10 multicolored T-shirts with messages ranging from "End the War in Iraq" to "Shut Down Guantanamo" and "Save Darfur." She also wore her clerical stole with a dove carrying an olive branch sewn into the fabric.

But on top of her layers of pacifism, Baker donned a fluorescent red vest with bold letters to remind her of why she was holding a dust bin and broom: "DC Superior Court Community Service."

As she put it on, she said, "I think there are better uses of my resources."

Her arrest in September was just another small consequence in a lifetime of civil disobedience. She has had handcuffs slapped on her wrists 25 times, she said.

"But my arms are thin, so I usually get out of them," she said with a mischievous smile.

She has shared a jail cell with the Rev. Jesse Jackson and received a phone call on New Year's Eve from anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. Baker once walked 120 miles from Irving, near Dallas, to meet Sheehan for a war protest outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford.

Her community service came three days after tens of thousands protesters, including Baker, gathered in Washington to demand a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. No arrests were made, according to police.

But as growing skepticism in Congress energizes the anti-war movement, Baker served as a stark reminder Tuesday of the limitations to freedom of speech.

Fritz Mulhauser, a staff attorney for the ACLU in Washington, said a D.C. statute was rewritten recently to place greater limitations on police during demonstrations, such as requiring them to give loud, repeated warnings.

"That's going to benefit protesters," he said.

Briefed on the details of Baker's case, Mulhauser said her arrest was probably justified. But, he added, "handing out meals at a soup kitchen is also a satisfying sentence."

As Baker slowly dragged her trash can down the streets of downtown Washington, she acknowledged that she had learned a lesson, albeit one on the "stupidity" of the justice system in "a country built on freedom of speech."

"They like to use this as a system of shame," she said, crouching down to pick up a cigarette butt lodged in a crack in the sidewalk. "But I'm not ashamed to be an American."

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