Fill the Jails! A Catholic Worker Vocation

Brian Terrell is a long-time Catholic Worker and peace activist who lived and worked with Dorothy Day in New York in the last years of her life. He currently lives at Strangers and Guests Catholic Worker, a farm in Maloy, Iowa.

The following is a transcript of Brian Terrell’s presentation to the National Catholic Worker gathering at the San Antonio Catholic Worker in early October 2025. It was auto-generated from the recording and reviewed by a human editor, who made minor edits for clarity. Cover photo: Brian Terrell and Martha Hennessy

Brian terrell:

I had not yet seen the October–November issue of The Catholic Worker that just came out, but I was happy to find on page one Dorothy Day’s writing about visiting the prisoner as a work of mercy. She wrote this in 1957 after being arrested during the compulsory air-raid drills in New York—practice for nuclear war.

She begins:

“When I think of the long sentences served by so many others, of so many miscarriages of justice; when I think of the accumulation of prisons, outmoded and feudal, that dot the land… I’m not particularly interested in writing about my few days in jail last month. I’m just glad that I served them, and I’m ready to serve them again if there is another compulsory air-raid drill next summer. It’s a gesture, perhaps, but a necessary one. Silence means consent. We cannot consent to the militarization of our country without protest.”

As a young woman, Dorothy first spent time in jail even though she never voted and wasn’t involved in the suffrage movement. She made clear she was there to protest for people’s right to speak out and for the treatment of the women held in the prison—not for the vote.

She wrote in The Long Loneliness:

“I lost all consciousness of any cause. I could only feel darkness and desolation all around me. That I would be free again after thirty days meant nothing to me. I would never be free again—never free when I knew that behind all bars all over the world there are women and men, young girls and boys suffering constraint, punishment, isolation, and the hardship of crimes for which all are guilty.”

Many reflect on the formative experience of jail—Eugene Debs, Jim Douglass, and others. Dorothy wrote not only about the number of people in prison, but about how American prisons have become so much worse. Visiting the prisoner is harder now; many prisons only allow video visits. Sometimes you must bring your family to a jail lobby to sit in front of a screen to see your loved one.

Mail has also changed. Some jails allow only prepaid postcards. Martha was once in a jail where that was the only mail you could send. Imagine what we would lose: no Letters of Paul, no Dostoevsky, no Solzhenitsyn—only what fits on a 3×5 card.

More than ever, the way to “visit the prisoner” is to be one.

Dorothy often quoted Dostoevsky: “The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.” It’s true: you understand the whole country better after that experience.

Over 30 years ago, I spent seven years at the Catholic Worker house in Davenport. We did extensive hospitality just down the tracks from the county jail. Several of us were in that jail many times for various causes, and it changed our relationships with our guests. The jail and our house were a revolving door. After sharing a bunk for two weeks with “Dirty Dan,” a frequent guest, our relationship was transformed. I was no longer a social worker—I was someone who had shared his cell.

I also learned how my own time in jail changed my relationship with the social workers. A Vietnamese refugee who had stayed with us earlier was arrested for drunk driving and needed to get out. I spoke to the jail social worker—someone I knew only by phone over years of arranging releases. She passed the clipboard through the bars, and I signed for him to stay with us. From then on our relationship was different—less bureaucratic, more human.

A Personal Story about Dorothy Day

One of my few unpleasant experiences with Dorothy happened in 1977. There was a huge protest at Seabrook, New Hampshire, where they were building a nuclear power plant. Thousands were arrested and held for weeks in armories and gymnasiums. Most of the New York Catholic Worker community went and didn’t return the next day as expected.

I was helping at Mary House. It was a hot summer with many emergencies. I was exhausted. Dorothy, whose health was failing, was eating in her room. I brought in a tray with a dish for her and one for me, hoping for a few minutes of quiet companionship. She looked at me coldly and said:

“What are you doing here? Your comrades are in prison. What are you doing here?”

I was angry. I left her plate and walked out. It wasn’t that she believed everyone should go to prison—but she knew me, and thought I should have been there.

Years later, when Robert Ellsberg published her diaries, I looked closely at the entries from when I was around. During that same period, she wrote:

“With everyone else taking responsibility and having taken it for so long, bearing so much, I feel like an utter failure—run dry… I pray, listen to the radio, and thank God the great demonstration at Seabrook is over.”

I realized she wasn’t angry at me—she was angry at herself.

A year later, in a Catholic Worker column, she wrote:

“I rejoice to see the young people thinking of the works of mercy as a truly revolutionary but nonviolent program… To oppose the nuclear buildup has led to the imprisonment last month of two of our workers, Robert Ellsberg and Brian Terrell, at Rocky Flats. Meanwhile I am confined in another way by weakness and age, but I can truly pray with fervor for those on active duty and sternly suppress my envy at the activities of our young and valiant workers.”

For a short time, I felt vindicated.

Other Voices from Jail

Mark Colville, jailed in Georgia during the Kings Bay Plowshares action, wrote:

“One of the blessings of incarceration is recollectedness—a mental and spiritual focus that I often find difficult in ‘minimum-security society.’ A jail cell strips away the illusions about what defines and sustains me. Discipleship in a culture of death shifts from aspiration to invitation. I thank the court of Brunswick County for its devotion to my spiritual health.”

Dan Berrigan wrote during the Vietnam War:

“In the course of such a war, one had to go to jail. It is an irreplaceable need, a gift not to be refused. You come out the skin of your soul darkened by the insight: the fate of the poor.”

But we must be careful—our privilege follows us into jail. We cannot set it aside. As Dan said, jail offers insight, not equivalence.

I’ve spent hours and days in the central lock-up in Washington, D.C.—long before Donald Trump called it “a den of criminals.” There are plenty of criminals in D.C., many elected, but central cell block is where I learned something striking.

Once, after an arrest protesting Guantánamo, a judge in Nevada—who disliked me—issued a warrant even though charges had been dropped. I was held 48 hours in D.C. while they waited to see if Las Vegas would extradite me. During those days, hundreds of men passed through. I was the only white man.

No one asked, “What are you in for?”
They asked: “What are you protesting?”

Because the only way a white man ends up there is by confronting the system—“Stop the torture,” defending Indigenous rights, opposing state violence.

Filling the Jails

Dorothy wrote in 1968 about “filling the jails,” an idea from the Industrial Workers of the World. The IWW made huge gains by refusing to obey orders to disperse, speak, or be silent. If enough people get arrested, the state cannot process them.

I’ve seen this work. Next week I’m going to Las Vegas with Nevada Desert Experience, preparing for an Indigenous People’s Day action at the nuclear test site.

In the 1980s and early ’90s, more than 36,000 people were arrested at the test site. Eventually the authorities had to put people in hotels because the jails were full. Protesters got room service on the government’s tab.

In 1992, nuclear testing stopped. The government never credited us, but years later the Nevada historical society designated the peace camp across from the test site as a Nevada historical site, acknowledging that protests ended nuclear testing.

My first time there was in 1987: thousands gathered; two or three thousand were arrested. This weekend when we go there, maybe a dozen will come. But small things matter.

As Pete Seeger said:

“If the world is saved, it will be because of tens of millions of little things people do.”

There is a false dichotomy between being “effective” and being “faithful.” God wants us to be the people who help save the world. Small actions can change things; they have.

On Being Jailed

I’ve done about two years in jails and prisons over 50 years—not much. The only time another inmate laid hands on me was in the Yankton, South Dakota federal prison camp. I went in with long hair and decided to try a new style, got a severe buzz cut. Later, as I opened my locker, a young inmate grabbed me from behind, drew back his fist, then suddenly dropped his hands and apologized. He’d thought someone was messing with “the old hippie” and stepped in to protect me.

Otherwise I’ve always been treated kindly by other inmates. I learn about societies through jails.

In 1992, I spent two days in jail in Tiberias, Israel, after a peace walk. All the other prisoners were Palestinian boys—children. They were detained without charges, without access to families or lawyers: hostages, not prisoners.

This year, I was in jail in Vilsbiburg, Germany—maximum security—for two weeks for refusing to pay a fine after cutting a hole in a fence at a nuclear-weapons base. I witnessed no disrespect of any inmate. The quarters were clean and spacious. It was, for me, a helpful retreat.

Who Should Go to Jail?

Not everyone should. Even Phil Berrigan thought carefully before encouraging that. But more people should than do. We are entering a dangerous time. Gramsci said:

“The old world is dying. The new world is struggling to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”

We’re seeing that now. If you heard recent speeches—Trump’s and the Secretary of War’s—they speak openly of “the enemy within.” That’s us. They promise full military force. During the McCarthy era, the military wasn’t involved. Now it is.

On the Criminalization of the Poor

Martha Hennessy:

It’s a cycle: people leave jail with no resources, become homeless, then get jailed for being homeless. Claire Grady taught her something important: we call ourselves “political prisoners,” but the poor, addicts, the marginalized—they are all political prisoners of our socioeconomic system. In women’s jails I’ve seen pregnant women who were safer inside than in their violent, drug-ridden communities. Jail can be a respite—and that is a tragedy in itself.

Abuses and Resistance

Scott-Schaeffer-Duffy:

I’ve seen the cynicism firsthand. In one maximum-security jail, prisoners had won a class-action suit saying two bunks in a cell was overcrowding. The jail removed the second bunk—then put the second prisoner on the floor. The suit was about the bunk, not the people.

Once prisoners were preparing a riot over repeated violations of the jail’s own rulebook. I convinced them instead to let me write a letter to the local paper, and we all signed it. The paper returned it—policy forbade printing letters from inmates. The jail opened it, saw our names, and put all of us in solitary.

When we got out, Dan Berrigan and I compiled a list of 250 documented violations. The day after our release we brought it to the sheriff. He said, “How do you know these are still happening?” We said, “We got out yesterday.” He refused to let us inspect the jail. But after the local press ran the story, the sheriff was fired.

Sometimes you find a decent person in authority. In Georgia, inmates told me envelopes cost 75 cents each—more than a stamp. I offered to donate 10,000 envelopes. The sheriff accepted the donation and reduced the cost to a nickel.

Other times, the cruelty is casual. In one jail, inmates weren’t allowed to have their shirt unbuttoned even for a moment after the shower. A guard saw a man buttoning his shirt and threw him in lockup, which led to all of us being locked up. When the captain asked if anyone had something to say, I spoke up: “I saw what happened. This was nothing. Jail is hard for inmates, but it’s hard for you too. Things could be easier with mutual respect.” He replied:“If we were outside, I’d respect you. Maybe buy you a beer. My job in here is to make you as miserable as I can so you won’t come back.”

Then they put me in lockup again.

Kathleen’s Story

Brian Terrell:

Kathleen once told me a story from a women’s prison. She spent her time folding paper cranes as gifts—one of the very few things you can give. The guards decided the cranes were contraband, a “fire hazard”. They lined the women against the wall, rifled through their meager posessions, and confiscated every crane they could find. When they were done, Kathleen said to the guards: “Oh, you forgot one bird”, and they yelled “Where?! Where’s that bird?”.

Kathleen stuck up her middle finger, and gave them the bird.