ustxtxb_obs_1985_01_11_50_00010-00000_000.pdf

On Nicaragua for the days of the “great rage” to come about. A Conversation with Jefferson Contingency Plans San Antonio OUR PARTY of mostly Episcopal and Catholic priests and laymen was flying back to Houston from Nicaragua, the sound of combat still in our ears. Exhausted from it all, I fell asleep on the airplane only to have Thomas Jefferson appear in my dreams. “Maury,” Mr. Jefferson began, “when James Madison and I were old men approaching death, we formed the Ex-presidents Club, where the two of us had grand discussions regarding the republic. Now, in the hereafter, sitting on a beautiful pink cloud provided by St. Peter, we continue to talk about the great issues of the day. In fact, I will be meeting with Madison in an hour or so and would like to tell him what you’ve observed of the Nicaraguan revolution. So I have some questions for you.” “Go ahead, Mr. Jefferson.” “No, wait a minute, Maury. I want you to first consider words I wrote about revolution, something all Americans should consider in evaluating Third World countries having their revolutions as we had ours against England. I said, `What country ever existed a century and a half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if its leaders are not warned from time to time that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take up arms.” “Mr. Jefferson, that same radical thought is expressly set forth in our Texas Constitution. It is something that needs to be read at luncheons of the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce and once a month to FBI agents. Go ahead with your questions, Mr. Jefferson.” Q. Was the Nicaraguan revolution disruptive? A. Of course, it was disruptive, but not as much as the American Revolution. Maury Maverick, Jr. , participated in a tour of Honduras and Nicaragua in early November. The group met with representatives of all sides in both countries. This article is reprinted with Maverick’s permission from his series about the tour, which appeared in the San Antonio Express-News. If you will read “The Loyalists” in the April 1975 issue of National Geographic, you will find the following comment: “Modern experts estimate that after the Declaration of Independence about 500,000 Americans one in every five could be classified as loyalists: those who remained loyal to the king and who opposed separation from England. “Nicaragua” For nearly 100,000 loyalists, the price of allegiance was exile. They were the uprooted, the banished, many of them forbidden to return upon penalty of imprisonment or death. One hundred thousand of the Colonial population of 2V2 * million: Today a proportionate exodus would depopulate almost the whole of North and South Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and Minnesota.” Q. What will happen in the United States if the U.S. military invades Nicaragua? A. Mr. Jefferson, when as a lawyer I first started representing young objectors to the Vietnam War, before Gerry Goldstein and Leonard Schwartz were out of law school, there was not a single organization in the country other than the Quakers that was dedicated to friendship with Vietnam. It took years Today there are more than 800 organizations in our country directly concerned with Central America. There are contingency plans in hundreds of big cities of America, including San Antonio, to occupy offices of congressmen, to non-violently disrupt the federal courts, and on and on. I want to look any federal judge in the eye after he has sent 10 Catholic priests and nuns and Methodist preachers, grandmothers and young girls to the penitentiary. Q. What will happen in Nicaragua if we invade? A. Well over 100;000 rifles have been distributed to the civilians of Nicaragua. They are ready to die, and they will take thousands upon thousands of our young men with them defending their own soil. Sir, they will die like tigers, like the Texans did at the Alamo. Q. What about American soldiers this minute in Honduras? A. Our government is lying to us about the extent of it. What’s more, there is a special scandal involved that I saw with my own eyes: the Jim Crow soldiers we have there, blacks, browns and poor whites. This is a scandal that can be mostly laid at the feet of liberals who do not insist on an honest draft. I say, Mr. Jefferson: one combat coffin Sidney Lanier High School; one coffin Alamo Heights High School; one coffin Martin Luther King Avenue; and one coffin Terrell Road. By Maury Maverick, Jr. 10 JANUARY 11, 1985