SU alum arrested during protest in support of WikiLeaks
As Roland Van Deusen sat outside the White House on Saturday, handcuffed in Flexi Ties, he had a lot going through his mind.
He thought about how this was his first arrest. He thought about what he, a 66-year-old, looked like with his hands cuffed behind his back for two and a half hours. He thought about what service to one’s country meant.
Van Deusen, an SU alumnus and Navy veteran who served in the Vietnam War from 1967-68, was among the 113 arrested for failure to obey lawful order Saturday at a rally against the Iraq War and in support of Bradley Manning, the Army private accused of leaking information to WikiLeaks. Saturday was the 8th anniversary since the start of the Iraq War and also marked the start of U.S. military involvement in Libya.
Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was among those arrested. Van Deusen decided to attend the protest after hearing Ellsberg speak at SU on March 8, he said. Van Deusen said Ellsberg’s drive to continue what he started when he released the Pentagon Papers inspired him.
‘He’s a man with a mission, and he hasn’t changed,’ Van Deusen said.
Professor Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center of Free Speech, organized Ellsberg’s visit to SU. Gutterman was honored to hear someone was so inspired by the talk that he would attend a rally in Washington, he said.
Ellsberg still has ‘a fire in his belly,’ said Gutterman, who remembered seeing people in the audience sitting on the edge of their seats when Ellsberg visited.
‘He’s an icon,’ Gutterman said. ‘Daniel Ellsberg is an icon and a historic figure.’
Ellsberg was arrested before Van Deusen was, Van Deusen said. Van Deusen, whose arrest record indicates that he was the 36th person arrested just before 3 p.m., said everyone arrested was fined $100 to leave jail. The group began to gather and listen to speeches a few blocks away from the White House starting at 11 a.m. on Saturday, Van Deusen said. Then a group of 1,500 began the walk to the White House, he said.
As an undergraduate at SU in the late 1960s, Van Deusen was active in student rallies. He helped organize ‘Walk Out on Wallace,’ the protest against pro-segregationist George Wallace’s visit in April 1967 during his campaign for presidency. Today’s students on college campuses are apathetic, Van Deusen said, and he would like to see more involvement.
‘I feel like it was my duty, I feel like I did my duty,’ Van Deusen said.
Van Deusen is a member of Veterans for Peace, which he described as a coalition that concentrates on honoring the warrior, not the war. He said he would like the troops to know there are people who would rather see them home than halfway around the world.
Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers, was again arrested with 34 others on Sunday while protesting outside Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia, where Manning is being held.
WikiLeaks is the first major leak since the Pentagon Papers, and Ellsberg said during his talk at SU that he was thankful to see the information released, according to an article in The Daily Orange published March 9. He believes the Army private accused of leaking information to WikiLeaks acted morally, he said.
‘It’s a high personal price to tell the truth, and I waited a long time to see it again,’ Ellsberg said during his talk at SU, according to the article. ‘So I was impressed.’
Published on March 21, 2011 at 12:00 pm
Contact Dara: dkmcbrid@syr.edu | @daramcbride
