On October 26, 2005 members of Peace Action and others were arrested with Cindy Sheehan during a nonviolent “die-in” at the White House commemorating the 2,000 U.S. soldier death. The government charged us for protesting without a permit in an area where you cannot get a permit -- the forty yards right in front of the White House which may be the most restrictive area of free speech in the country. Last Wednesday, I along with three other defendants represented ourselves pro se with the expert advice of National Lawyers Guild attorney Mark Goldstone. In a victory for free speech, the Federal judge ruled in favor of our motion of acquittal before we had a chance to give our full defense. Had we been given the opportunity to make our voice heard it would have sounded something like this:

With due respect to this Court and to Your Honor, we will not be judged by this court. History will judge us. History will judge us like those who participated in the Boston Tea Party, the women’s suffrage movement, the civil rights movement and others who held the vision and displayed the courage to go to jail for justice.

It was in the spirit of great nonviolent leaders such as Dorothy Day, Mahatma Gandhi and Reverend Martin Luther King that we assembled on October 26th. We were arrested for the crime of civil disobedience and thus are on trial here today defending ourselves. However it is our contention that it is not we who should be on trial but rather the target of our protest: the Bush administration.

They should be on trial for lying to the world and leading us into a war on false pretenses. They should be on trial for the deaths of nearly 2,400 American soldiers and the deaths of 30,000 – 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children. The Bush Administration should take the stand for the mental and physical injuries of several hundred thousand American soldiers and innocent Iraqis and their loved ones. They should be on trial for torture. They should be on trial for using unauthorized covert wiretapping programs in violation of the civil liberties of countless innocent Americans.

They are also in violation of international law. In 1928 the Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed by all of the industrialized nations of the world. It renounced war as "an instrument of policy." It’s a treaty and it’s still in effect and that makes it, according to Article VI of the Constitution, an American law as well. The Pact declared “all members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state,” and that the supreme international crime was to initiate a war of aggression. The United States violated this treaty in its war of aggression on Iraq and now once again with its unthinkable plans to use nuclear weapons on Iran.

The list of crimes and transgressions committed by this administration is long and regrettable. It is our belief that history and, depending on your spiritual beliefs, a higher power, not the courts, will be the judge of our actions and of those of our government. We humbly believe that our actions will be judged as a ray of hope in a time of despair, and that the Bush administration will be judged for the blanket of darkness they’ve spread over the world.

Paul Kawika Martin is the Organizing and Political Director for Peace Action, the nation’s largest grassroots peace organization with nearly 100,000 members and 100 chapters.