Mike Palecek

	Fiction Non-Fiction Poetry Film Art MEB Authors Events Distribution Contacts	www.iowapeace.com >Dispatches from the road, book tour 2007 Mike Palecek lives in northwest Iowa with his family. He works at a group home for mentally-disabled adults and also drives a bus. During the 1980s, he served five terms in U.S. federal prisons and county jails for non-violent civil disobedience against America's military. He has worked as a reporter, editor and publisher on small newspapers in Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. In 2000, he was the Iowa Democratic Party's nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives, Fifth District, garnering 67,500 votes on an anti-prison, anti-military, pro-immigrant platform in one of the most conservative congressional districts in the nation. Palecek was a seminary student in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1979 when he met Fr. Daniel Berrigan. On Berrigan's invitation, Palecek attended a protest at the White House and Pentagon during Holy Week, where he saw Fr. Carl Kabat pour blood on a White House pillar. [Kabat has since served over 16 years in U.S. prisons for his resistance to the American military.] He describes this as a seminal event in his move toward activism. Mike says he had a breakdown during his last jail stint, six months in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, county jail, requiring anti-depression medication to make it through. A psychiatrist diagnosed it as clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. "It was the first time I had been in jail when we had a son," said Palecek. "I think that had a lot to do with it. It also could have been post-traumatic stress syndrome from an earlier time in the Chicago, Leavenworth, Terre Haute, El Reno and El Paso federal prisons. When I was sentenced to Council Bluffs, the judge gave me a choice of whether to stay close or go to the federal medical center in Springfield, Missouri. I had heard stories about Springfield and chose to stay close to my family and friends. "And my troubles could also have been due to me not being tough enough. A lot of people do a lot more time than I did and come out in better shape, or at least, that's what they say. However, the truth remains that America's prisons are horrific warehouses of human beings. And Americans generally do not care one way or the other, thinking it has nothing to do with them."

www.iowapeace.com

>Dispatches from the road, book tour 2007

Mike Palecek lives in northwest Iowa with his family. He works at a group home for mentally-disabled adults and also drives a bus.

During the 1980s, he served five terms in U.S. federal prisons and county jails for non-violent civil disobedience against America's military. He has worked as a reporter, editor and publisher on small newspapers in Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota. In 2000, he was the Iowa Democratic Party's nominee for the U.S. House of Representatives, Fifth District, garnering 67,500 votes on an anti-prison, anti-military, pro-immigrant platform in one of the most conservative congressional districts in the nation.

Palecek was a seminary student in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1979 when he met Fr. Daniel Berrigan. On Berrigan's invitation, Palecek attended a protest at the White House and Pentagon during Holy Week, where he saw Fr. Carl Kabat pour blood on a White House pillar. [Kabat has since served over 16 years in U.S. prisons for his resistance to the American military.] He describes this as a seminal event in his move toward activism.

Mike says he had a breakdown during his last jail stint, six months in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, county jail, requiring anti-depression medication to make it through. A psychiatrist diagnosed it as clinical depression, post-traumatic stress disorder.

"It was the first time I had been in jail when we had a son," said Palecek. "I think that had a lot to do with it. It also could have been post-traumatic stress syndrome from an earlier time in the Chicago, Leavenworth, Terre Haute, El Reno and El Paso federal prisons. When I was sentenced to Council Bluffs, the judge gave me a choice of whether to stay close or go to the federal medical center in Springfield, Missouri. I had heard stories about Springfield and chose to stay close to my family and friends.

"And my troubles could also have been due to me not being tough enough. A lot of people do a lot more time than I did and come out in better shape, or at least, that's what they say. However, the truth remains that America's prisons are horrific warehouses of human beings. And Americans generally do not care one way or the other, thinking it has nothing to do with them."