With his own voice shaking slightly in anger and horror, betraying the tone of one who has seen almost too much, the speaker beseeched us not to cry. It was too late for that. He could ask only that we act. Perhaps that too was why we were here-to stand and scream "no" to something so horrendous it could not really be faced. Because only such a scream could tell us we were really alive ourselves.

IV

THE SERVICE ended, and we gathered at St. Augustine's. St. Augustine's is a small modern building in Southwest Washington that doubles as an Episcopal church and a Jewish synagogue. This week it would serve as our antiwar headquarters, We would sleep on the altar. It was carpeted. Some of us would send out press releases and coordinate activities with those in jail. Ninety-two of us-eight women and 84 men-planned to be arrested the next morning.

Our attorneys, Phil Hirschkopf and Ray Twohig, came to advise us: "The main problem will be the loss of communication... if you want to stay in jail, don't take in more than ten dollars-that's what collateral will probably be... the greatest con men in the world are the con men in prison, so don't take in anything you don't want to lose . . . you minister types will have to resist the temptation to try to convert everyone... drink plenty of liquids, or they may give you intravenous feeding... women, expect a vaginal inspection. . ."

By 3 a.m. we all needed some sleep. I was completely exhausted. But sleep came only after I was convinced I had memorized the lawyers' names and the telephone number at St. Augustine's. They were already written on the inside of my left arm, anyway.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Monday, Lafayette Park, across from the White House, began filling with a conspicuous number of persons in black shirts and white collars. The Park Police were already hassling a priest carrying the six-foot high charred cross. (A large cross is not, after all, a typical sort of thing to carry on one's shoulders in Lafayette Park on a Monday morning.)

For a moment I thought our cross would be lost before we even began.

At about 10 a.m. we crossed Pennsylvania Avenue. We began our worship service on part of the sidewalk next to the Executive Drive. We were within a stone's throw of the White House.

Two hours after we began the service, police issued three warnings to clear the one-third of the sidewalk we were occupying. By the third warning the police had formed lines prohibiting pedestrian traffic on the entire block. One by one friends were helped from their kneeling positions and placed under formal arrest. The rest of us continued to sing. We were charged with what the police lines so successfully accomplished- "incommoding the sidewalk."

V

THEN the horror show began. We could only wait patiently, thinking of food and wondering where the next stop would be, while those in charge tried to figure out which way the slow rolling wheels of justice were to turn. If the confusion had not been so utterly pervasive I would have believed it was all an incredibly sophisticated plot designed to threaten the sanity of any person whose misfortune it is to be arrested. (As it was, I think that it was chaos and confusion completely out of control-though this made the situation no less tempting to madness.)

I was "booked" by a gum-chewing, shoulder-holstered detective who looked like he had seen too many TV thrillers. "Over here... Name?... Occupation?... How do you spell seminarian?... Never mind... s-t-u-d-e-n-t..." And Fingerprints. They get about twenty-five of those-that is, if the man doesn't smudge any. We didn't sign much. Somebody just put each of our ink-covered right thumbs on the bottom right-hand corner of everything. Then the mug shots-J. Edgar needs to keep up-to-date photos.

I was in my first cell. But there was another mistake, and I stayed only ten minutes. I was escorted up one flight of stairs and ordered to the end of a long row of cells. A very young looking officer then activated a switch, producing the grinding sound of metal sliding on metal. The sound culminated with a dull clunk. I walked through the door to join five friends in a five-by-seven cell containing two bare metal "bunks," a toilet, and a small sink.

With no great sadness, we left that cell about an hour later. A riot bus drove us to a new location. All the male demonstrators were now together, stuffed into the "bullpen" buried somewhere in the basement of one of the many D.C. courthouses. There were two stinking urinals, two plugged toilets, and, as I remember, no working faucets.

Food covered the floor of the cell. One of the U.S. marshals in an adjacent room explained that lunch had been served earlier, and that there had not been enough time to clean up before our arrival. We had not eaten for 24 hours. With 75 of us packed into this small room containing a single bench with seating capacity of 25, I was feeling nauseous at best.

So this was jail. Or, at least this was jail for a group of non-violent religious protesters. We had expected ugly and dehumanizing conditions.

That's exactly what we found.