April 6, 2018 at 1:53 p.m.
Medal of Honor winner coming for protest
But on Sept. 21, the Congressional Medal of Honor recipient will take part in a pilgrimage to close the school and end what he sees as its contribution to the oppression of indigenous people.
The Kateri Tekakwitha Interfaith Pilgrimage will begin at the National Shrine of Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha in Fonda on Sept. 18. Protesters will spend four days marching to the State Capitol, where a rally on Sept. 21 will include such guest speakers as Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, Rabbi Paul Silton of Temple Israel in Albany, Rev. Robert Lamar of the Capital Area Council of Churches and Mr. Liteky, who renounced his Medal of Honor to protest U.S. policy in Central America.
Hero in Vietnam
Mr. Liteky told The Evangelist that his "metamorphosis from a clerical hawk into a civilian dove" was a gradual one.In 1967, Charlie Liteky was known as Rev. Angelo Liteky, a Catholic chaplain in Vietnam assigned to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade. He felt the war was "for a just cause" -- even during the battle that earned him his Congressional Medal of Honor.
"I was with my platoon 20 or 30 miles east of Saigon," he remembered. "We were checking out a border site. We ran into a battalion-sized NVA [North Vietnamese Army] unit that was staging for the Tet Offensive, which was to be the next month. We followed two or three VC [Viet Cong], and it turned out tantamount to an ambush.
"A lot of men were hit right away. We suffered heavy casualties. My role was to help get the wounded and dead out. It was a reflex reaction on my part. I regard bravery as when you're scared and you go ahead and do it anyway. People were crying for help. You didn't stop to think."
When the fighting was over, Father Liteky had personally saved more than 20 men. In 1968, he received his Medal of Honor in a ceremony with four other people.
Changing life
Nearly 15 years later, having left the priesthood, married and made his home in San Francisco, Mr. Liteky was urged by his wife to attend a "house meeting" where Latin American refugees were telling their stories. Soon afterward, he took a trip to El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras."It was a wake-up call," he stated. "I just saw the horror of it all. It didn't register until the mothers of the `disappeared' and assassinated began to show me what they had to do to identify the bodies of their loved ones."
That was the beginning of Mr. Liteky's transformation. He went back to Central America three more times, "waking up to what the Vietnam War was about" and becoming a dedicated member of the peace movement. Eventually, he left his job as a counselor for the Veterans Administration to devote himself full-time to peace and justice work.
Activist
In 1986, his disgust at U.S. policy in Central America caused him to make another move: renouncing his Medal of Honor."It's the first time anybody's ever done that," he told The Evangelist. "I felt the names on the Vietnam Wall were names of young men who'd been lied to, so I figured it would be an appropriate place to leave that [medal]. I wrote a letter to [then-President] Reagan, put it in an envelope and left that there."
Since then, Mr. Liteky has been arrested a half-dozen times for taking part in protests of U.S. Central American policy. He served six months in a federal prison for splashing blood on the School of the Americas "to allow the people running the school to see what blood looks like."
He has even moved to Georgia to carry on a daily protest of the School of the Americas (SOA), which is located in Fort Benning. Graduates of the school, which trains Latin American soldiers, have been convicted of the murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero; six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter; four American churchwomen; and scores of El Salvadoran civilians.
'Obscene' policy
"The SOA just happens to be one issue," Mr. Liteky said. "U.S. foreign policy toward the poor is, to me, incredibly obscene. We train the military! There is no revolution for these [indigenous] people. Every time they try, the U.S. is there to help the wealthy class put them down."The protester is working on a "memorial wall" that will list the names of victims of SOA graduates "to remind the soldiers out there who are running this school: This is what happens when you train these people. When they come up here, they get training in warfare, counterrevolutionary training. [The SOA] has made a great effort to include courses on human rights, but these are not the well-attended courses."
While Mr. Liteky's leaving the priesthood was unrelated to his growing involvement with peace and justice work, he has since left the Catholic Church, partially because of disappointment that it did not respond more strongly to atrocities committed by the Contras and in El Salvador.
"I really can't continue to participate in a Church that doesn't touch something like that and condemns a lot of things that have to do with the bedroom," he stated. "There's so much emphasis on life hereafter, and not life here and now."
Efforts
The protester will take time from his vigil at the SOA to participate in the interfaith pilgrimage and plans to speak locally three other times, as well. He hopes to see a large crowd turn out for the pilgrimage."For people of faith, where peace and justice is part of the tapestry of their faith, we must protest," he declared.
However, Mr. Liteky will soon return to the SOA, where he is committed to stay until it closes. If that happens, he plans to move on to addressing other issues of U.S. foreign policy.
(The Kateri Tekakwitha Interfaith Pilgrimage will begin at 10 a.m. on Sept. 18 at the Tekakwitha Shrine in Fonda. It will conclude on Sept. 21 from noon-2 p.m. with a rally at the State Capitol Building Park, West Side. For information on the pilgrimage or rally, call the New York State Interfaith Alliance at 786-3156 or the Albany Catholic Worker at 482-4966.)
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