Berrigan Says U.S. Problems Can End With Social Overhaul

The entire American society must be changed before attempts can be made to change particular problems like colleges, prisons and psychiatric institutions, Rev. Daniel Berrigan told a Boston College crowd last night.

Berrigan, speaking before 500 people at the college's 27th annual Candlemas Lecture, said, "These institutions are suspect, but there is no way of doing away with them if the society in which they exist isn't changed."

"The question 'What do we do?' invariably comes up," he said. "There is the possibility of not much, and the implication of nothing. But there is something that can be done."

"Awareness is the big thing. Find connections with people around the world, in the same situation as us," Berrigan said.

Berrigan's presentation included readings from poetry he wrote while serving two years in Federal prison for destroying draft records and an acknowledgement by 16 members of the United Farm Workers who marched through the hall bearing signs asking for support of the A&P lettuce boycott.

Berrigan's poems were mostly satirical pieces of prison life and prisoners during what he called his "two years of room and board" on "a grant from the Federal government."

"Being in jail was like landing on the other side of the moon," he said of his prison experience. His obscenity-sprinkled poems derided "rich crooks," who steal from the government and are imprisoned.

He spoke of the prison chaplains' attempts to comfort the prisoners, saying, "We were the happiest when they were going, rather than coming to see us."

He also ridiculed General Motors, General Foods, and General Electric companies, whom he compared to the "holy trinity of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit."

Dr. Robert Coles, research psychiatrist to the UHS, also spoke, encouraging the audience to be active enemies of social oppression, and to "seek liberation for all kinds of peoples, especially and first of all for ourselves.