Witnessing for peace in D.C. is always an experience in which I come away with more than I showed up with.

I was one of the 61 people arrested at the White House on Tuesday for calling for an end to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and and end to U.S. involvement in torture.

There would have been 84 people arrested, but instead of arresting the 23 people at the White House gate who were requesting to meet with Obama and give him a petition calling for an end to the wars, etc., the uniformed Secret Service personnel chose to rough them up and shove them out into the street. More on that later.

I'd rather be arrested than to have someone treat me in a way that might result in bodily injury. Personally I think arrest is a wiser choice than physical violence for all parties involved. The resulting lawsuits can take a real financial toll.

Besides the 84 people who risked arrest, there were between 300 and 500 other people witnessing as well.

There were only two counter demonstrators because the people who usually demonstrate against us were a bit confused as to what to do in this instance. Demonstrating against us might make it look like they actually supported Obama and they certainly didn't want that. So they mostly just stayed away. I found a wonderfully perverse amusement in this situation.

I walked with “March of the Dead” from the pool behind the Capitol. About 25 of us dressed in black T-shirts that said “We will not be silent” wore white masks with black scrim in the eyes and mouth, and wore a sizable sign with the name and age of someone killed in either Iraq or Afghanistan. We processed silently and respectfully (and for me prayerfully) through the city, keeping the name of our victim in our hearts.

On my way to the march, I didn't want to carry both the mask and the sign with my person's name on it (she was a 17-year-old girl killed in Iraq) while traveling the Metro, so I put the sign on. Lots of people looked, and looked again. I thought that it might be an interesting action to have thousands of people across the U.S. wear a sign with the name and age of someone killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. It would be a way to raise the collective consciousness about the vast casualties of war.

There was one group of people that did not look and treated me as if I was absolutely invisible. While making a transfer on the D.C. Metro, I was waiting on the platform. The train stopped, I waited by the open doors for the passengers to disembark and out stepped a group of military people, including a couple of West Point cadets (youngsters). Other than one of the cadets who stole a glance, not one of the military people looked at me. Not one.

I guess it is easier to kill people when you can't see them.

When we got to the White House, there were other groups already there making their witness, including Witness Against Torture (I've done a number of actions with them), Code Pink, and World Can't Wait.

There were also several members of the D.C. SWAT team, dressed in black and carrying semiautomatic rifles.

Eleven of us processed slowly and kept silently walking in a circle in what is referred to as the postcard zone (PCZ) of the White House.

There was also a water truck making a great deal of noise and almost drowning out the people who were reading the names of those killed in the wars and tortured to death and prayerfully chanting, “Mourn the dead, heal the wounded, stop the war.” We thought it interesting that a water truck would be there on that day, because we had given the city several months notice that we would be there. When I saw it, I had visions of them turning water hoses on us a la the civil rights actions in the '60's.

Now before I tell you what happened next, I have to say that I sympathize with all of the D.C. police agencies (there are 31 or 32 in the city; I can never remember the correct number) and the Secret Service. With veiled threats, some of them incredibly thin, against Obama that began right after he was elected (the diner in Maine with the “assassination pool” you could toss your bet into and their sign “Let's hope somebody wins” was one) and the recent poll on Facebook asking if Obama should be assassinated, to say nothing of the racism that has suddenly become front and center in our culture, I can imagine that those charged with protecting the president are nervous, to say the least. And frankly I cannot blame them. I'm nervous. And I pray for both the president and those charged with protecting him.

When I discussed this with some of my fellow peace witnesses, they would say that the police know that we're nonviolent. We are, and because of that we'd make the almost perfect cover for someone intending the president harm.

Not long after we had arrived, maybe 20 minutes, the park police (who are responsible for the area around the White House) sent in their horseback brigade. They came in along the fence behind us and started coming, real, real close to us “March of the Dead” folks.

They did not get behind any of the other groups in the postcard zone.

Now, I grew up on a farm and I live in Saratoga Springs. If you're going to try to intimidate me with an animal, a horse is a poor choice. It's like putting your house cat in my face. I also know enough to know that police horses are among the most well trained and calm animals on the face of the planet. The police will spook before the horse will.

Some of the SWAT team offices began to cordon off the PCZ with yellow police tape and told us if we did not leave we might be arrested.

The mounted police began to come closer, trying to herd us off out of the PCZ and onto the street.

I stood my ground; I wasn't moving. I had a constitutionally guaranteed right to be where I was and to be doing what I was doing – which was just standing there.

They kept nudging us with the horses and Tarak Kauff told us to lie down; the horses would not walk on us. So we had an impromptu “die-in” and the horses did not in fact walk on us.

The mounted park police took the horses out of the PCZ and into the street and began to use the horses against the people witnessing in the street. I could hear people telling the officers to stop using the horses against the people in the street.

From what I later learned, the officers had herded the people out of the street, where they had the legal right to be (Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House is closed to motor vehicles – foot and bike traffic only). When the mounted police left, the people went back into the street.

The park police gave the three requisite warnings that we were in violation of the ordinance against 25 or more people demonstrating without a permit. Since there were only 11 of us "March of the Dead" folks, 14 under 25, I didn't move. I remained laying down on the sidewalk in the PCZ with 10 other people for about 45 minutes.

I heard the police say they had to get some folks who had chained themselves to the fence off of the fence. I later learned that some of the Witness Against Torture folks and Cindy Sheehan had chained themselves to the PCZ fence.

The police began to arrest, cuff and search people before loading them onto a city bus brought in especially for this demonstration.

We "March of the Dead" people were the last of the witnesses in the PCZ to be taken away. Just our luck, by then the nice bus with the padded seats and the air conditioning was full, so we ended up in a “Paddy Wagon."

My arresting officers were really quite nice. They gave us advice on how to hold our hands behind our backs (knuckles together) so that we would be comfortable no matter how we moved our shoulders. They also allowed us to either keep or give our masks and signs to some bystanders for safe keeping; warning us that if we kept them they might be damaged or lost.

The officer even let me pull down the sleeves on my T-shirt to protect my wrists as I have recently had surgery on them.

I'll write a “part two” about what happened in the jail at the Anacostia Station and about our grace- filled interaction with the desk sergeant there.

I want to leave you with a “what not to do” as a bystander at a demonstration. Do not tell the police that they are acting like Nazis following orders for arresting people, as one bystander did. Besides the fact that it does nothing to help the people being arrested (and may in fact cause them to be harmed) it does nothing to further the cause of peace.

The first victims of an unjust law are those that have to enforce it. And they are often the most wounded victims. We need to be tender with the arresting officers. I have found on more than one occasion that they in fact agreed with my values and motivations. They are trying to pay a mortgage and put food on the table. They too are caught in a system that perpetuates nonpeace.