One activist's journey: Jailed protestor is free ***GREENLAND - A Portsmouth woman is free after spending 29 days in a maximum security prison for her actions during a peace protest in Massachusetts. Lauren Cannon, 29, was released from Framingham Women's Prison on Nov. 11, a day earlier than she expected because of the Veterans Day holiday. One of the first things she did was go for a long walk on Wallis Sands.
Cannon's prison experience has clearly had a profound effect. "Everything was illuminated when I drove down my road and the leaves were all down and I realized fall had passed me by," said Cannon, on a break from her job at the Women's Feminist Health Center. "There's a heightened sense of awareness about everything.
……..Cannon was jailed for criminal trespass for blocking the driveway of Raytheon Inc.'s Andover, Mass., facility. She and five members of the Lawrence, Mass., Bread and Roses Affinity Group were protesting the defense contractor's manufacture of guidance systems for Tomahawk cruise missiles _ recently used by the United States in Iraq and Yugoslavia.
………."The disproportionate number of Spanish and African Americans in prison is really connected to the billions of dollars we spend to go overseas and kill Iraqi innocents," said Cannon. "When we're spending that much money on weapons of death we're not spending it in the streets here to feed people or provide health care."
Cannon wants to work with a national program called Alternatives to Violence, which teaches communication and conflict resolution skills to inmates. "I think it's going to be a great place for me to start doing some prison work," she said.
Cannon said she also has a new "secret" focus for her research into possible graduate schools. She has added law schools to a list that already included health care and midwifery.
Cannon will be speaking about her experiences at 12:15 p.m. on Dec. 5 at the Dover Friends Meeting House and again in Portsmouth at the Unitarian Universalist Church, date and time to be announced. ***
HUH???