Johnson: Community service or jail? Beliefs led to a cell

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published September 2, 2006 at midnight

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I had figured her for being, well, nuts.

If a judge offers you the option of doing 10 days in jail or serving 24 hours of community service for protesting the Iraq war outside a Lakewood recruiting office, which would YOU pick?

I would be in the community-service line, picking up my orange vest and garbage stabber so fast the judge's head would spin.

It has been almost a month since Ellen Stark, of Boulder, walked out of the Jefferson County Jail after serving 11 days for third-degree trespassing and obstructing a passageway - this related to the armed forces recruiting office protest last November.

She was one of the so-called No Blood for Oil 12, all of whom had gone to trial following their arrests. All were found guilty.

Seven of the 12 opted for community service and suspended sentences. Ellen, 60, and four others - Richard Edmondson, 56; Bonnie McCormick, 75; DeAnn Major, 40; and Carolyn Brinski, 56 - chose jail.

"I have no remorse for my actions," DeAnn said at the time.

"I feel what I did that day was community service."

Ellen was tending to her granddaughter as we spoke Friday. And, no, she didn't have regrets, either.

"I think you're just called to do what you have to do and hope it has a positive effect for others."

Going to jail was no fun.

She remembers being handcuffed in the courtroom, being led out of a side door and told to walk down a long corridor to an elevator. Push no buttons, they told her. When it opens, just get in.

She was in the elevator for what she imagines was about 20 minutes - it seemed disorienting, scary.

When the doors opened, she was hustled out, fingerprinted, stripped, told to squat and cough and given different clothes.

She was then put in a holding cell with no place to sit or lie except for the concrete slab beneath her feet. She stayed there for about four hours before being led to her pod, an eight-woman cell.

DeAnn and Carolyn were already there when she walked in. Bonnie, who'd told the judge she needed time to find someone to care for her cat, wouldn't arrive for another day.

Ellen had been in jail once before, in Denver, on a previous civil disobedience beef.

The first day in the Jefferson County Jail, Ellen acknowledges, was frightening. There are the noises, the lights that never go out.

"And everything has been taken from you," she said. "You have to do exactly what the guards tell you to do. You can't tell what time it is, which is so disorienting. You can't see the sun or the sky, (feel) the wind on your skin," she said. "Everything you know about life is gone."

Many of the other inmates knew who the protesters were, and they cheered when each one arrived.

On the second day, when the newspaper carrying the story of their sentencing arrived, they all passed it around, finally clipping the story and hiding it from the guards.

Dinner starts at 4 p.m. and lasts for 30 minutes. Lockdown follows until 5. The doors then remain open until 11. There is no "lights out." They only dim slightly until breakfast is served at 5 a.m.

It was a slow way to pass time, she said. There was the law library, but it had limited access.

For the entire 11 days (they don't count the first day as part of the sentence), Ellen ate nothing, she said, and started out drinking only water.

It was the fulfillment of a promise she and Richard had made before their confinement.

It is why she refused work release, which the judge had offered and which could have freed her three days early.

And besides, her attitude was the same as Bonnie's, who would spend her first 12 hours in jail on the concrete slab of the holding cell.

"We didn't go to jail to find work," the two women agreed.

Ellen did agree about halfway through to put a teaspoon of orange juice in her water.

"I just had gotten progressively weaker," she said.

When the other inmates learned of her self-imposed plight, they reacted in a "most touching" way.

"Thirteen of them came to me offering me their orange - which is also against the rules," Ellen said.

She emerged from the jail at 9 a.m. on Aug. 5.

"It was an educational experience being in jail, of seeing what it is like. It is a very powerful thing, and I learned a lot.

"There is a lot of injustice. The women there are mostly poor or drug addicts, plus a lot of them are women so poor they couldn't pay the fines from an earlier charge, so they ended up back there for simply that reason."

She'd gone in, Ellen said, hoping to send a message - mostly an anti-war one - to others. After the 11 days, she said, she realizes she likely did it for herself.

"There is a lot of power in saying, 'no,' to the system," she said. "It is empowering when you take a stand and find this incredible personal strength I didn't even know I had."

Would she do it again?

"I would, absolutely," Ellen said without hesitation.

"OK, but not right away."

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-954-2763, or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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