Conference Workshops

Personal Issues in Interrogation Join Jean Maria Arrigo in a communal reading of her letters from a military liaison to counterterrorist police teams in the Middle East. 

Torture, Popular Culture & Truth  A “traveling anti-torture show” by the Bay Area Religious Campaign Against Torture (BARCAT).

Primetime Torture  Explore the use of fear as justification for torture and how this is antithetical to our faith stories.  Led by Carol Wickersham.

Moral Support for Military Personnel Who Stand against Torture  Join John Crigler in recording words of encouragement to some military personnel who resisted the torture regime. 

Building a Movement: Creative Strategies for Local Action  Learn about Amnesty International's Counter Torture with Justice campaign and ways to take action to end U.S.-sponsored torture.

Dostoevsky & Graham on Torture & the Church  Ray McGovern will lead us in a provocative exploration on conscience, church and what we do about torture.

Click "read more" for full description of workshops.

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WORKSHOP SESSION I (participants can choose one):

Personal Issues in Interrogation  Jean Maria Arrigo will lead a communal reading and discussion of her correspondence from a counterintelligence liaison officer assigned to counterterrorism police teams in the Middle East.  Many new themes emerge, such as relations between U.S. interrogators and Middle Eastern torturers, effects of hostile interrogations on interrogators, interrogator impersonation of physicians, and conflicts in the field with NGOs.  The correspondence is archived in The Intelligence Ethics Collection at Hoover Institution Archives.

Primetime Torture The ticking time bomb scenario has become one of the most dominant narrative in our culture.  It's use of fear as a justification for setting aside law and morality are antithetical to our faith stories. This workshop will explore where this story comes from, why it resonates--especially with people who identify as religious--- and what can be done to effectively counter it.  This is fundamental work of faith communities that must be done if we are to counter popular acceptance of torture as the way we do business.  Led by Carol Wickersham and including the video Primetime Torture produced by Human Rights First.

Torture, Popular Culture & Truth  A “traveling anti-torture show” by the Bay Area Religious Campaign Against Torture (BARCAT).

WORKSHOP SESSION II (participants can choose one):

Military Personnel Opposing to Torture  John Crigler will lead this group in a short meditation period, with meditative music, for participants to reach deep inside of themselves for words of encouragement or appreciation to a few military personnel who have opposed torture, whom Crigler will “introduce” to us through songs and video.  With recording equipment available, participants will be able to communicate their thoughts to these military resisters to the torture regime, and a CD will be produced on the spot. 

Building a Movement: Creative Strategies for Local Action  Led by Amnesty International Western Regional Field Organizers, Will Butkus and Sara Schmidt, this workshop will provide training on multiple ways of taking concrete action to stop U.S.-sponsored torture and to support the call for accountability, as seen through the lens of Amnesty International's Counter Terror with Justice campaign.

Dostoevsky & Graham on Torture & the Church  At a recent Senate hearing on torture, Sen. Lindsey Graham gave a hat-tip to the Spanish Inquisition: “One of the reasons these techniques have been used for about 500 years is that they work.”  (Torture does not “work,” but, for people of faith, that whole argument is grotesquely beside the point.)  In Dostoevsky’s story of the Grand Inquisitor, Jesus joins “the tortured, suffering people” of Seville; the cardinal puts Jesus in jail and tells him the church has “corrected” his big mistake: rather than donning “Caesar’s purple,” Jesus gave us freedom of conscience. Are we tempted to cede our consciences to the institutional church or to our government?  Annie Dillard says, “There is only us; there never has been any other.” It IS up to us; what do we do about torture?