Dozens of Mennonites were arrested on Capitol Hill last week after protesting the war in Gaza outside Sen. Mark Warner's office. Many of them were from the Harrisonburg area. WMRA's Randi B. Hagi reports.
Several regional chapters of the grassroots group Mennonite Action converged in D.C. on Sept. 9 to ask for Warner's support for the "Block the Bombs Act," a bill that would prevent the delivery of U.S. weapons such as bombs and tank ammunition to Israel.
CHARLOTTE SHRISTI: We want an end to the killing and starvation in Gaza, but we realize that it's being done with our money, with our taxpayer dollars, and so we feel like we cannot look away because the blood is on our hands.
Charlotte Shristi, a member of a Harrisonburg-area Mennonite church, told WMRA they did not see the senator, so they sat outside his office and sang hymns and civil rights songs for about 15 minutes before U.S. Capitol Police arrested them. A video provided to WMRA shows an officer warning the singers to leave before other officers start handcuffing them with zip ties.
[officer shouting overtop protesters singing]
Shristi said she and 59 other protesters were arrested, including Ciela Acosta, a third-year peacebuilding and development student at Eastern Mennonite University. Acosta said they continued to sing through most of the arrest, which seemed to affect some officers.
CIELA ACOSTA: One of them was moved to tears. … To arrest people who are singing a hymn like, "Lord, listen to your children praying," I think, is pretty jarring and hopefully makes them question why we're there.
Shristi and Acosta said they each paid a $50 fine and were released.
The Associated Press reports that the death toll in Gaza has surpassed 63,000 people, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and the world's leading authority on hunger crises has declared a famine in Gaza City.
