A Westside Journey of Conscience : Religion Helps Mold Housewife Into Radical With Arrest Record

Mary Brent Wehrli lives down a flowery lane in a lovely Spanish home in the hills of Brentwood. Her husband is a Century City lawyer, her daughter a first-year medical student at USC, her son a carpenter working on a teaching degree in Oakland.

But there ends the stereotype of the pampered Westside housewife. The 47-year-old alumna of the Marlborough School and UCLA has a string of “gosh, I don’t know, maybe 20” arrests, two as recent as January.

And then there’s that prominent photograph of her being hauled from a Republican Party fund-raiser Feb. 6 at the Century Plaza Hotel, where she interrupted President Bush’s speech, appealing to him as a fellow Episcopalian to end U.S. military aid to El Salvador. The Los Angeles Times photo, by her own admission, shows her looking strident and angry, her blouse pulled open to expose her bra as she resisted a burly man yanking her away.

How did it come to pass that this affluent Westside woman would get in the habit of provoking arrest and wind up infiltrating a $1,000-a-plate dinner to behave like that in front of her President?

Wehrli may put her manners on hold occasionally, but not, in her view, her conscience.

To her, there are no contradictions in her story--or voyage, as she calls it. It is a clear and steady progression of a religious woman from a sheltered and privileged background who has always taken things literally, including the Gospels. When her lifelong commitment to volunteer work and being a do-gooder started exposing her to poverty, Wehrli says she became increasingly radicalized, asking herself: “Just how many more pots can I make and how many pansies can I plant?”

“All this talk of brothers and sisters, I mean to me they are. I don’t see how people can be written off,” Wehrli said recently, in her sunny manner. She was in her West Los Angeles office, where she directs the Southern California Interfaith Task Force on Central America, an organization that seeks to educate and mobilize the religious community against U.S. military intervention in Central America and to support refugees from that area.

The journey that took Wehrli from complacency to activism was fresh in her mind. She had been asked to describe it at least three times that day at Loyola Marymount University during a teach-in on “the struggle in Central America,” a response to the assassination of six Jesuit priests, their cook and the cook’s daughter in San Salvador last November.

“For me the journey began (when I started) doing social services at the Neighborhood Youth Assn. in Venice. Poor minority kids were not being served by government subsidy or program. I was appalled at how underfunded they were. Why? There was no lack of funding for nuclear weapons (or for military aid) in Central America.”

As Wehrli began to absorb the enormity of the conflict in Central America she recalled her lack of attention to the Vietnam War and said to herself, “This time I’m going to be one of the people who understand.”

She subscribed to--and read--”everything.” She started to edit articles and compile them into a monthly newsletter that she sent, unsolicited, to about 60 of her friends.

“They still speak to me, the madwoman at home, but actually it helped me keep my sanity. I became more helpful, though, when I got involved in (the task force).”

In the meantime, she had also become active with Women of Conscience, an ad-hoc group of women from the church community who came together in the early 1980s to demonstrate and perform acts of civil disobedience to protest U.S. policies in Central America. Like Wehrli, many of these churchwomen have become increasingly radicalized, and, like her, many supply much of the paid and volunteer labor force of “the solidarity community” that fuels the movement.

Wehrli has traveled to El Salvador and Guatemala twice, but she considers the trips a luxury. Her real work, she says, is here, trying to change U.S. policy, and she believes that change will occur if enough people demand it.

At Loyola Marymount, Wehrli was in her element at lunchtime, standing behind her card table loaded with information on Central America, waving aside a plate of food with the explanation, “I’m sort of wired.”

Sister Joanne DeQuattro, a Catholic sister of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary who works at the Peace and Justice Center of Los Angeles, was also at the Loyola-Marymount teach-in. She first met Wehrli through Women of Conscience and fondly recalled their first meeting.

“She is without a doubt one of the most unique and credible people there is. She has an incredible ability to see the connections between U.S. policy on Central America and conditions (in the United States).” And Wehrli was making those connections at Loyola Marymount.

“Four billion dollars were sent to El Salvador,” she said. “Think what could have been done with that money at home”--research toward a cure for AIDS, for instance.

Wehrli, who is “Mary Brent” to her friends, has a prim and proper look about her: little makeup, clear complexion, large no-nonsense glasses, graying hair pulled back in a low bun, usually tied with a colored ribbon. She dresses conventionally, except for occasional Central American embroidered or woven items.

Her wardrobe is built on hand-me-downs and rummage, and she said she inflicted the same dress code on her kids when they were younger. Nor would she allow them to indulge in the trendy toys and games of their era.

“I was in many respects a very austere parent. I’m not sure that’s the way to be. Martin (her husband) is the loving, nurturing parent. I think I’m a bit of a fanatic, I suppose.”

Once, after her children were grown, her pastor, meaning no insult, suggested she talk to a group of prospective converts about “ ‘how you decided to put your work ahead of your family.’ I started to cry. . . . In the traditional sense, there’s no question he’s right.”

But her daughter, Gail, said recently that she and her brother wouldn’t have it any other way. Her mother “was not home baking cookies for me,” Gail said, but she found her “loving, caring and tolerant of what I was doing.”

About her parents’ roles, Gail said: “They’re very different. My father’s much calmer. My mom is quite hyper.”

The Wehrlis could only laugh when they heard that assessment. Both described themselves as a team, and Martin said he agrees with his wife’s politics.

But would he do what she did to the President?

“I haven’t got the guts for that. Besides, I’m a more private person.”

There is some guilt about the toll on her family, Wehrli admits, and about the nice house she lives in, and even about her priorities in her activism. It came up when she described how rewarding she finds her work.

“Working with refugees one can only have hope,” she said. “They’ve suffered such trauma and loss, and yet they know they’ll be successful. The poor and downtrodden here do not have that hope. In fact, I’ve been evaluating how I can (justify) doing this work when our own cities are crumbling. I don’t know what form it will take, but I’ll be thinking of that next year. We have to find some way to build that hope back into people here.”

Whatever the form, and regardless of the guilt and self-questioning, one thing seems fairly certain: There will be no turning back.

At a workshop at Loyola that morning, called “Involving Yourself in El Salvador,” the moderator had asked Wehrli what brought her to that moment with the President.

“Doing that with George Bush was obviously not a first step for me. It was the result of 10 years. It was not whimsical. Prayer, thought and planning went into it. What advice I would offer people is: Always take a next step.”