Prisoner of Conscience

About the Book

This memoir relates one American’s compelling journey of conscience that culminated in a federal prison sentence for a peaceful act of resistance. Kennon was one of twenty-five Americans in a single federal trial to receive the maximum sentence for a petty offense. Six months for a Class B misdemeanor and a $3,000 fine. The introduction, a fast-forward through this offender’s life story, clearly reveals the motivations and consequences of this clergyman’s purposeful act of resistance, in the spirit of Gandhi and King and in the face of a governmental threat of prison time. Chapters 1 through 7 are taken from his contemporaneous prison journal and letters to family members. They tell how he was dealing with what happened each month during the time he was incarcerated. “Over the years I have studied corrections as a sociologist and visited inmates as a clergyman. It is a very different experience being a prisoner,” writes Kennon. He paints prison life with a mixture of pain and humor that captures the ironic picture of a correctional institution bent on retribution without rehabilitation. Mingled among these pages are his prison poems, reflections, and articles, as well as selected excerpts from wise writings he encountered during his time there. An epilogue gives a glimpse into what has happened since his release and a brief update on the struggle for peace that caused him, and scores of other Americans, to become prisoners of conscience.

About the Author

Kenneth Kennon was born and reared in a politically conservative Missouri Ozarks family. He was a Boy Scout in his youth, a security clerk for the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a young adult, and an ordained clergyman in pastoral ministry for decades before his incarceration in a federal prison for a peaceful act of conscience. Active in the protection of refugees, the Sanctuary Movement, and Pastors for Peace Caravans to Central America, he has been involved in SOA Watch efforts to close the U.S. “school of the assassins” on Fort Benning since 1992. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.