Faith, from within

[KG]

While in prison, Faith Fippinger, the Sarasota woman who served as a human shield in Iraq, finds strength, solace and a new cause.
By KELLEY BENHAM, Times Staff Writer
Published June 19, 2004

COLEMAN - The last time we talked to Faith Fippinger, she was in her Sarasota living room in a flowered dress, offering a glass of orange juice, wondering about prison.

She wondered whether the government would send her there, and if it did, whether she could do the world any good while she served her time.

Now here she is, in an olive green prison uniform, most of the way through a three-month sentence at Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in Sumter County. "I'm sorry I can't offer any juice," she says. After all, it's not her kitchen.

Except for the surroundings, not much about her has changed. She's still in trouble with the government for going to Iraq last year as a human shield: putting herself in the path of missiles and volunteering in Iraqi hospitals, trying to stop the war. She's still waiting to find out how she'll be punished for violating U.S. sanctions against travel to Iraq. She's still not sorry she did it.

For months, her case slogged through bureaucracy and her story made her a hero of peaceniks, a target of hate calls and the subject of a documentary. All the while she wondered if she would go to prison. Officials at the Treasury Department said she would probably just get a fine, but she doesn't trust them.

Then, in November, she got nailed swift and clean for a similar but less glamorous act of civil disobedience. This time she went to the Army base at Fort Benning, Ga., got arrested on a trespassing charge, and was quietly and unceremoniously sent to jail.

So now she knows. >>>>MORE

http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2004/06/19/Floridian/Faith__from_within.shtml

a real american hero.

[Tamiati]

1. A hero of any country

It does not surprise me that this post has no response.....She made her stand, and it shows how really wimpy most Americans are.....

To stand up & have the courage is all consuming.....