The
Kings Bay Plowshares 7 released the following statement on Monday:
"On Friday, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the
landmark Intermediate Range Nuclear Missile Treaty (INF). 'There is a
real and present danger that this action will provoke a renewed nuclear
arms race and brings us closer to nuclear war,' says Martha Hennessy,
granddaughter of Catholic Worker co-founder Dorothy Day and co-defendant
of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7."
[The seven Catholic defendants are “charged with three federal felonies
and one misdemeanor for their actions in going onto the Naval Base at
Kings Bay Georgia and symbolically disarming the massive amount of
nuclear weapons at that base.” The group states that their actions are
“to make real the prophet Isaiah’s command to ‘beat swords into
plowshares.’” The seven are: Martha Hennessy, Mark Colville, Clare
Grady, Jesuit Fr. Stephen Kelly, Patrick O’Neill, Carmen Trotta and
Elizabeth McAlister (the widow of Philip Berrigan). [See KingsBayPlowshares7.org as
well as National Catholic Reporter coverage and
recent piece in The Brunswick News.]
The group's statement continued: "This is not the first failure by
the U.S. to either endorse or abide by treaties which would reduce the
threat posed by the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction. The
crucial Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty was adopted by the UN
General Assembly in 1996, and has been ratified by 166 countries, but
the U.S. is not among them. In 2001, President George W Bush formally
withdrew from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) signed with the
U.S.S.R. in 1972. We must worry that the U.S. will next quit the New
START Treaty signed with Russia in 2010; such an action would erase a
legally binding, verifiable agreement capping the number of strategic
nuclear warheads possessed by the nuclear powers.
"Since 1980 Plowshares has been a movement of nonviolent symbolic
direct actions disarming nuclear weapons on at least 100 separate
occasions.
"Most recently, on April 4, 2018, seven Plowshares activists
entered the Kings Bay nuclear submarine base, in Georgia for a
nonviolent symbolic disarmament action. The base is homeport to six
U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarines, each armed with 16 Trident
II missiles.
"The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, all devout Catholics, now face up to
25 years in federal prison. Their trial in Southern Georgia federal
court may begin in March or April. As in previous acts of civil
resistance and conscience, the defendants seek to expose the illegality
and immorality of Trident’s omnicidal nuclear weapons.
"The INF
Treaty is a highly imperfect shield against the growing nuclear
arsenals festering in nine countries. What will help to ensure human
survival is the moral conviction of people willing to undertake
symbolic acts as one way to chart other roads leading to a disarmed
world.
"With actions such as Kings Bay Plowshares 7 and the International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, also known as ICAN (the 2017 Nobel
Prize winner), which is promoting the Treaty for the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons, this nation could pull back from the brink of
omnicide."
“Pulling out of the INF Treaty was an
unconscionable and reckless act on the part of the Trump
administration,” said Kings Bay Plowshares defendant, Patrick O’Neill.
“Such unilateral action involving weapons of mass destruction only
serve to put our planet at greater risk for the use of nuclear weapons,
which could end the human experiment.”
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