AMY GOODMAN: You are listening to Democracy Now!, The Exception to the Rulers. I’m Amy Goodman.

More than 600 people packed into the St. Peter Claver Church in Baltimore, Maryland, yesterday for the funeral of Philip Berrigan, perhaps the largest gathering of ex-cons in the country. And Philip Berrigan would have been proud. He is the legendary antiwar activist. He died last Friday at home surrounded by his family and friends. He had been diagnosed with liver and kidney cancer about two months before. Many people came from the community of Baltimore and from around the country, including Martin Sheen, who we’ll hear from tomorrow, and historian Howard Zinn. After the funeral, I asked him for his thoughts.

HOWARD ZINN: Well, you know, Philip Berrigan, I think, is one of the heroes of our time. So, he has given so much courage and so much inspiration to a whole generation of people, because he’s been in the fight since the Vietnam War, and then, after the Vietnam War, carrying on his acts of civil disobedience against militarism, against the nuclear arsenal of the United States, and going to prison again and again. I mean, he spent almost 11 years of his life in various prisons, because he insisted on risking his freedom in order to try to spread the message of peace. And he had immense courage. I mean, here he was, a veteran of World War II, came out of that war not believing that war can solve the problems of the world. And he’s combined this amazing religious faith with his powerful political conviction. And I’ve always admired him. And, you know, I think he leaves behind so many, so many people, thousands and thousands and thousands of people, who know about him, who followed his activities, saw him going to jail, listened to his message. I mean, here we are in this church, and it seems like this church is just crowded with people who loved and admired him. And it seems that half of these people have been in jail for one reason or another.

AMY GOODMAN: I believe it’s the largest gathering of ex-cons in the country. I believe it’s the largest gathering of ex-cons in the country.

HOWARD ZINN: That’s a good way to put it. We could call them ex-cons. Yeah, we could call them fugitives from injustice. Or we could call them, as Dan Berrigan once referred to people like Phil and others who went to jail, holy outlaws. But these all are wonderful people who’ve gathered here today. And the recollections of Phil, I think, made people feel that, you know, while we’ve lost him, you know, his spirit remains with us.

AMY GOODMAN: You went to North Vietnam with Dan Berrigan.

HOWARD ZINN: Yes. Yeah, I became friends with Dan Berrigan when he and I went to North Vietnam together in early 1968 to bring back the first three American flyers, prisoners released by the North Vietnamese. And I had known Phil Berrigan a little before then. But, you know, I was there at the trial of the Baltimore Four in '67, at the trial of the Catonsville Nine in ’68, and I became very close to his whole Catholic antiwar community, to Elizabeth McAlister, who, of course, later became Phil Berrigan's wife. And here today I see their three children, all marvelous young people. And it’s been thrilling to be here, even on this sad day that follows Phil’s death.

AMY GOODMAN: Some would say that symbolically hammering on warheads, well, where has it gotten us? We’re now, for example, at the point of about to invade — of being about to invade Iraq. What do you think about this symbolism?

HOWARD ZINN: All acts of protest look futile at the time they’re done, and very often for some time after they are done. And it’s only very often years later that one sees the cumulative effect of thousands of acts of protest that looked at the time pointless. But if people don’t engage in these apparently futile acts, then nothing will ever be changed. And I know this, that the acts that Phil and the other people in the movement took of what seemed as if they weren’t going to bring about anything immediate, and they didn’t bring about anything immediate, these resonated with thousands and thousands of people, who themselves wouldn’t commit these acts. But because it took the kind of courage to say, “I’m going to spend years in prison,” people who wouldn’t commit these acts themselves, but who saw that and were energized by them. And there is a countless number of people in the antiwar movement today who were inspired by the things that Phil Berrigan and Dan Berrigan and Liz McAlister and all these other people have done. So, I would be very cautious before I pronounced any act of protest futile.

AMY GOODMAN: Howard Zinn, historian, at the funeral of Philip Berrigan yesterday. Among those who gave the eulogy were Brendan Walsh. He, together with his wife Willa, founded Viva House, which is the Catholic Worker house in Baltimore. He remembered Philip Berrigan,

BRENDAN WALSH: Philip Berrigan is our friend, and he’s a friend to everyone gathered here today. Philip Berrigan and his Jonah House community are friends of Dorothy Day, our Viva House community and all the Catholic Worker houses throughout the world. Philip Berrigan is a friend to the poor of Baltimore City. You saw what we’re doing to the poor on the walk over. Philip Berrigan is a friend to all those who are bombed and scattered. He’s a friend to all those who are starved, trampled upon, imprisoned, tortured, humiliated, scoffed at, dismissed as nobodies, who are robbed and beaten and left for dead in ditches all over this planet.

Philip Berrigan knew, as Chief Sitting Bull knew, that our insatiable love of possessions was indeed a disease. Phil was street savvy. He knew these streets around Peter Claver. And he understood racism, that still festers and still divides this nation. After the publication of his first book, No More Strangers, in 1965, Stokely Carmichael observed that Philip Berrigan was one of the few white people in this country who actually knew what was really going on. Philip Berrigan knew the truth. He was a witness to the truth. He was that rare combination where word and deed are one, always, everywhere, steadfast, rock solid, hopeful, one in a million. He was that tree standing by the water that would not be moved. The gospel was Phil’s truth. He understood the meaning of the mystical body better than anyone we know. All of us are sisters and brothers to one another. And when one of us suffers an injury, all of us suffer the injury. It was that simple for Phil Berrigan.

So, when the filthy rotten system that Dorothy Day wrote about threatens to tear us apart from one another, that system has to be resisted, always, everywhere. Throughout his entire life, whether he be locked tight in the maximum security of our stinking jails or, as he would say with that wise old grin, living in the minimum security of Baltimore City, he fought — as we Irish people say, he fought the famine, and he fought the crown. And he paid for it.

We had the privilege of knowing Phil for 35 of his 79 years. And he was in prison for 11 of them. Think about it. That’s almost one out of every three days. And he never complained, and he never whined. There was no self-pity. If you received a letter that Phil sent from jail, you would never learn of the suffering he was enduring. During his last imprisonment, Phil must have struggled with the intense pain of his hip. And surely, the terrible cancer had begun to assault his body. But he never complained. He never complained. Indeed, Phil is a brother to the suffering servant described so magnificently by the Prophet Isaiah. And as soon as he completed one stint in jail, he was organizing yet another Plowshare action. He always asked us to join him. He asked all of us to join him. Phil Berrigan would repeat for us today the last words of Joe Hill: “Don’t mourn for me. Organize.” Organize, as he said in his last days, that general strike against the warmakers.

And why was Phil in jail for all those years? Again, his simple answer: “You can’t burn the planet down. We can’t and we won’t let them burn the planet down. That’s our number one business.” In 1967 and 1968. Phil told Johnson, and he told Nixon, that they can’t burn our sisters and brothers in Vietnam with our napalm, our white phosphorus, our cluster bombs. With his last breath, he told Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld — you know the gang — he told them, “We won’t let you bomb the people of Iraq and leave our depleted uranium, our nuclear garbage scattered all over their land for decades to come.” And we dare to call the Iraqis terrorists as we look down our guns, as we kill their children with our sanctions, and we dare to search for their weapons of mass destruction, while we, the mass murderers in Hiroshima, in Nagasaki, in Chile, in Salvador, in Afghanistan, etc., etc., and we continue to design and build and deploy even more hideous weapons of mass destruction. Phil named it. He called this country the terrorists.

Philip Berrigan was one intense brother. On May 17th, 1968, the day of the Catonsville draft board raid, three people were designated to drive the nine resistors to the site. We were at the home of Al and Pauline Lewis, Tom Lewis’s parents. I was to drive one of the cars. It was the St. Peter Claver parish car. And Phil and Dan Berrigan were two of the passengers. When it was time to proceed for Catonsville, Phil grabbed the keys from me. He’d do the driving. He would make sure that that car would get there. He would make sure those draft files, those killing licenses, would be burned. Yes, indeed, as Dan would write, it is better to burn paper than it is to burn children. I will never forget the intensity. I thought about Jesus overturning the tables in the temple. Intensity.

Philip Berrigan was one honest brother, but we all know that. Even our kangaroo courts knew that. He scared them to death. I remember one trial. It was in the late '70s, I think. Phil was on trial so many times that sometimes it was hard to say when one ended and one began. At the Pentagon, I threw ashes, and Phil threw blood. On the day of the trial, the cop who arrested me failed to show, so I walked. The cop who arrested Phil did show up and testified that Phil threw ashes. When Phil was asked what he did at the Pentagon, he simply stated that he threw blood. The judge, a difficult man, who sentenced people harshly, dismissed the charges against Phil because of the false testimony of the cop. He said in all the years that Mr. Berrigan had come before him, he never lied. I was elated to walk away, but Phil wasn't too happy about it.

On Dorothy Day’s gravestone, there are but two words: “Deo Gracias,” “Thanks be to God.” Yes, Phil, Deo Gracias, for your life, for your spirit. And now that you’ve gone to another place, all of us have to do more. “Coraggio,” Phil used to say. Coraggio to you, Phil. Peace to you and to us.

AMY GOODMAN: Brendan Walsh, co-founder of the Catholic Worker house in Baltimore, remembering Philip Berrigan, October 5th, 1923–December 6th, 2002. Philip Berrigan leaves behind his family, his friends and the peace movement in the United States.

And that does it for today’s program. If you’d like to order a copy of today’s show, you can call 1-800-881-2359, 1-800-881-2359. You can go to our website, democracynow.org. Our email address is mail@democracynow.org. Tomorrow. Martin Sheen remembers Philip Berrigan and talks about his own opposition to war. Democracy Now! producers: Kris Abrams, Mike Burke Angie Karran, Ana Nogueira, Alex Wolfe. Rich Kim is our engineer and music maestro. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening.