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Father Bill O’Donnell was arrested again.  

This time, he was charged with trespassing at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. 

A parish priest at St. Joseph the Worker Church, O’Donnell says he went to Georgia to protest the work of the military training center where he believes Latin American military leaders are trained to murder their compatriots. There were 70,000 peasants in El Salvador killed by soldiers trained at the school, he says. “When the American people discover what our government is doing, they’ll force congress to stop funding it.” 

O’Donnell has been actively involved in social justice issues since 1963. He said he was “exiled to Berkeley” over twenty seven years ago. He had asked the bishop to assign him to the poorest of parishes. But his superior, not enamored with his radical opinions, put him in Berkeley, O’Donnell said.  

Best known as Father Bill, O’Donnell epitomizes Berkeley at its most progressive and compassionate. 

The priest will be 71 in January. He has had heart surgery, a stroke, and just last month, right before being arrested, he fractured his hip, and was put in the paddy wagon on crutches. But nothing stops him. His spirit is as vibrant as ever. His eyes are full of sparks, and though he could get by on sheer charm, he makes no attempts to. He is direct, and extremely forthcoming with his opinions and the choices he has made as a Catholic priest. 

Father O’Donnell’s interest in fighting for basic rights for the poor comes straight from the gospel. “It’s exactly what Jesus did,” O’Donnell says. “The Church exists to be with poor people.”  

His civil disobedience began in 1969 when he was arrested while working with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. A farm boy himself, from Altamont, Calif., he was impressed by the organizing successes of the Farm Workers. He was arrested when urging Safeway to support the grape boycott. 

Father O’Donnell explains his strategies, including risking arrest, using the phrase “speaking truth to power.” 

He says he’s angry when he sees how people are forced to live. “I’m drawn to violate the perpetrators, not with my fists anymore – I learned better than that – but with my tongue.”  

A 10-day course with Saul Alinsky, the radical organizer of grass roots movements throughout the United States, taught O’Donnell to organize for power. 

Taking advice from Alinsky, O’Donnell says, “It’s important to keep your anger cold. If you let it get hot, you blow it, you are discounted. But cold anger gives you the energy to propel forward in a directed, focused way. Then you look carefully for your enemy’s weakness.” 

Alinsky’s organizing ideas include the concept that all people act out of self interest; the trick is to make sure their interest is the moral interest. Father O’Donnell fiercely believes the School of the Americas is immoral and that it is against the American peoples’ self interest to support the school with tax money..  

“In my fight, my responsibility is to help a person (or institution) change. If I can educate someone about the immorality of an issue, I have the hope of that person changing. But, if I am unable to educate them, I shame them. Those who misuse power are actually already full of shame. I hold the mirror up for them to see themselves.” 

Father O’Donnell, like Father Ray Bourgeois before him who has served four years in prison because of his protests at the School of the Americas, could be sent to prison for trespassing on any military base. He is under a Ban and Bar Order since being booked. A judge in Georgia told O’Donnell, “You come to my court, I’ll give you a year.”  

“I’m afraid, sure, but I’m more afraid not to (act),” he says. “I hate the idea of being locked up in jail, but it would give me the opportunity to be alone with my God. I act on what I see as right. I’d love to get out of it because it’s frightening, it’s trouble. I don’t like to be in trouble. But if you’re given the ball – not a very good simile – you’ve got to run it through.” 

Quoting Ghandi he adds, “There’s no other thing I can do. This is the stand I take, God help me.” 

Father O’Donnell sums up his activism as an opportunity for him to become a better human. 

“When I do this work, I know I’m doing something real. There’s fear, and criticism, I piss off my enemies. And then there’s support. In cooperation with others, I find strength. During an action, there is a profound joy – it comes out of nowhere, just a surprise, for doing the right thing. You’re free to be truthful in a loving way, and if you’re a person of faith, you can say it’s godlike.” 

People can join Father O’Donnell at St. Elizabeth’s Church, 1500 34th Ave., in Oakland at 11 a.m. Jan. 27 in a demonstration for Amnesty for Undocumented Illegals, the ‘day workers’ who do manual labor throughout the Bay Area.