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Clare Grady at 100 Seconds To Midnight
By Susie Day On December
2, 2020
April 4, 2018,
fifty years after Martin Luther King’s murder: Seven white, aging Catholic
peace activists cut a fence and enter Georgia’s Kings Bay Naval Base, the
largest nuclear submarine base in the world. They carry hammers and bottles of
their own blood to deface nuclear monuments, and banners decrying “omnicide”:
the unimaginable destruction promised by nuclear weapons, not only of human
life, but of life on Earth. They read a statement, repenting of “the sin of
white supremacy” and resisting U.S. “militarism that has employed violence to
enforce global domination.” They’re arrested and thrown into jail.
Heartfelt and
daring, this protest was meant to be known around the world. It’s barely been
noticed.
This “Plowshares
7” action is just the latest in decades of nonviolent, Catholic-led protests,
wielding hammers, blood, and banners, begging the world to pay attention to the
increasing threat of nuclear war.
Says Clare Grady,
62, a Plowshares 7 defendant: “When I was younger, if you had this antinuclear
awakening, there were any number of activist choices. That doesn’t exist now,
except for some older white people still doing it – it’s definitely not cool.”
Since Plowshares
actions began in 1980, many arrests, convictions, and much jail time have
accrued. On November 12, Clare was sentenced to one year and a day. She’s due
to report to federal prison in February.
I also fear
nuclear weapons, energy, and accidents. Yet I’ve done almost nothing to speak
up about this. That’s why I called Clare at her home in Ithaca, NY, and asked
her about her life.
An Irish Thing
I was born and raised in the Bronx. My dad was the child of Irish immigrants. His mother was a maid her entire life and never lost her Irish brogue.
My dad was underground a lot, doing draft
resistance, draft board actions. The FBI were always trying to catch him;
they’d come to our apartment. The neighborhood kids had a fun time, calling
them flatfoot and things, ’cause they were so obvious. But my nana was: [speaking
in brogue] “Go away, will ye?” My childhood was filled with
these experiences, which is perhaps unusual for people that look like me.
This was the late ’60s, early ’70s. My dad was part of the Camden 28 [anti-Vietnam War activists charged with 1971 raid on Camden, NJ draft board], so he was hugely on J. Edgar Hoover’s wanted list. The FBI referred to my dad as “Quicksilver” because he kept evading them. He was always in – I guess you’d call it “good trouble” these days.
Our mom had five kids and more than anything loved being a mother and being in the Bronx. She was from Chicago, so she didn’t talk like everybody else’s “muthah.”
We grew up with dear, beloved friends – almost all of whom we’re still in touch with. It was really a tight neighborhood. I went to John Philip Sousa Jr. High School, and Angela Davis was on everybody’s minds then, like the Black Panthers. My school was maybe 10% white, with the rest Black and Puerto Rican. We have good times now, connecting over our childhoods and what it looked like from different perspectives.
My mom supported my dad ’cause he was
underground so much. Us kids knew he was underground. It’s an Irish thing – we
had this friend from Ireland, Lonnie Donegan, who’d come over here to do music.
He’d warn us: [brogue] “Tell them nothing.”
Because we’d been colonized for 700 years. So there was this culture already in place, and our dad – even though he was born in the Bronx – identified with the Irish rebel more than anything.
He was arrested
during that Camden raid and put right in jail. I remember they brought him into
the courthouse. Everybody was chained, shackled together, walking through the
hallway to the courtroom, singing Irish rebel songs. He was surrounded by a
bunch of other first-generation Irish people whose mothers were very connected to
the resistance in Ireland. Like, never lose your roots?
The Monster Won’t Decapitate Itself
We moved to Ithaca when I was going into tenth grade. While it was breathtakingly beautiful, this Cayuga land where I lived, I was feeling the lack of the Bronx. I was in high school here three years, then I went back to New York City and joined the United Farm Workers. I was waitressing, taking classes at Hunter College, living on the Lower East Side. Then in 1980, Plowshares Eight happened [General Electric Nuclear Missile Re-entry Division, King of Prussia, PA].
When I heard about that, I thought: “Trying to get the United States government to disarm is like asking a monster to decapitate itself. Just not gonna happen.”
Then I realized, “They’re not asking the
US government; they’re doing it themselves.” It was so liberating.
That began a revisiting of my family tradition, nonviolent Catholic action. I
saw it as not opposed to other actions, like collective bargaining and strikes,
but as something different, that can absolutely energize a situation.
Back in Ithaca, I’d had a social studies teacher, Mr. Kane, little white guy, God bless him. He had us read The Autobiography of Malcolm X – he was the only teacher in that school who’d do such a thing – and had us watch footage of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing. Until then, it’d been pretty much classified. I’d already done some study; I knew the dangers of nuclear weapons.
Then in November 1982, my 19-year-old sister Ellen and my 21-year-old brother John did the Plowshares Four action [General Dynamics Electric Boat Shipyard, Groton, CT]. Going to the trial of my brother and my sister, I saw so clearly how the court was protecting the weapons and shutting out the truth about their mere existence.
So in November ’83, on Thanksgiving Day, I acted with the Plowshares at the Strategic Air Command at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New York. It was the home of the B-52 bombers we’d used in Vietnam, to rain down death and suffering. They were being refitted to carry first-strike cruise missiles. We hammered on the doors of those bombers. Seven of us were charged with sabotage and put on trial in Syracuse federal court.
We were acquitted of sabotage – which was
huge, ’cause it carried 25 years – but found guilty of destroying government
property. Three of us women were given two-year sentences because we didn’t
have college degrees, and four were given three-year sentences because they shoulda
known better – as insulting as that. Four of us were sent to Alderson for 18
months. That was my first time being in prison.
What’s important for me is that I was living my life. So when I got out of prison, I came back to Ithaca and worked at a community kitchen, Loaves and Fishes, for like 17 years, while my kids were being born. I literally went into labor there.
When my kids were in their early teens, I
was part of this symbolic action on St. Patrick’s Day in 2003 [Lansing, NY,
military recruitment center], at the dawn of Shock and Awe. We simply
poured our blood in a vestibule, right? The feds indicted us and I ended up
spending time in FCC Philly for that.
Racial Justice Essential
Then, in Ithaca, there was a murder by a white cop just two blocks from where I live. I looked out my window and, because of the life I’d lived, I could see at a glance the police had done something terrible – they had killed this Black man, Shawn Greenwood. I was on two collectives for justice for him – this was before Black Lives Matter. This standing up for racial justice gets neglected by most of us white people. Even when we know better, even when our parents didn’t raise us like that, we forget that racial justice is essential.
I was at Standing
Rock. My time working with water protectors there was profound. The Red Warrior
Camp put out a video and said, if you do nonviolent direct action, we want you
to come.
Two things to
know. One, Standing Rock resistance was started by the youth. Two, they
explicitly wanted it to be rooted in prayer. That was rarely translated by the
time it got to the East Coast. There was this symbolic action of saying prayers
at the frontline. I’m like, “I am not Indigenous; this is not my land; but I’m
glad to see people doing this and not apologizing for it.”
The older I get, I
see the swirling of how the creator connects us in these weavings. It
reinforces my sense that no one person is expendable, but no one is carrying it
all, either. Your imagination is not big enough to carry what’s unfolding.
Holding Back Armageddon
The blood that we poured at Kings Bay Naval Base? I’m part of a community where blood is used as a symbol of atonement. It cuts through intellectual brain fog. It’s also not a big deal, the blood’s drawn by a nurse, and it’s stored carefully. We took a little of our blood in small bottles, and we took hammers – household hammers – and spray-paint and bolt cutters and banners – we brought three to Kings Bay.
You know, the
Trident is literally the most deadly weapon on this planet. There are 14
Trident nuclear submarines with six at Kings Bay. That’s their homeport. Our
factsheet says, among other things, that each of those submarines can carry 24
ballistic missiles; each missile can carry up to eight 100-kiloton nuclear
warheads – or about 30 times the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb.
Most people have
no idea. Honestly, I don’t think about it every day. I try to act humanly in
the face of what I know, and emphasize the positive part of what I feel we’re
called to do. I’m trusting that universal spirit is holding back Armageddon for
us to get our stuff together.
Finally, after
centuries of work by people of color, we have Black Lives Matter – finally, we
have these awakenings. I feel like we’re on the cusp of something. My hope is
that we start to weave in how nuclear weapons are connected. For me, they’re
the billy club of the planet – the enforcement mechanism of white supremacy and
global capitalism. They’re used, 24/7, to extract resources, labor, and life.
In my sentencing
statement I called on Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam” speech, where he identifies
the giant triplets of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism. I said I
took a nonviolent disarmament action because the Trident is killing in my name.
It doesn’t just kill if it’s launched, it kills every day. Indigenous people
are some of the first victims – the mining, refining, testing, and dumping of
radioactive material for nuclear weapons happens on Native Land…
I knew, even
though the judge could get ****ed off and give me more time, that I wasn’t just
speaking to the judge. I got 12 months and a day. I just got the papers, I
report on February 10. They’re still deciding where to send me. It’s crazy; I’m
really scared of being in prison during COVID. But people can get stuck on,
“Oh, poor you.”
Actually, it’s all
of us. If you have any kind of privilege or power, use it because we’re on this
cusp now. Listen to the voices of the Hibakusha, the survivors of the bombings
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Learn how we’ve used nuclear weapons – what did that
look like? What does it look like now?
Listen to the
scientists who are telling us, “Hey, we have 100 seconds to midnight…” Then
connect the dots to Indigenous people and people of color who have been on the
frontlines of this violence daily.
© Susie Day, 2020
Sources.
Plowshares 7
action:
Kings Bay
Plowshares site:
https://kingsbayplowshares7.org
Camden 28:
John Grady,
“Quicksilver”:
John – quicksilver: https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/ROHHH3S6SLHMD/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_rvw_btm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00KGFGJZO
John Philip Sousa
Jr. High:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Sousa_Junior_High_School_(Bronx)
Lonnie Donegan:
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/singer-lonnie-donegan-dies-at-71-1.1104356
United Farm
Workers:
Plowshares Eight
& Four – see chronology:
http://www.plowshares.se/aktioner/plowcronology80-84.shtml
Plowshares Four:
Griffiss
Plowshares, 1983:
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/25/nyregion/the-region-b-52-is-damaged-in-upstate-protest.html
Alderson Federal
Prison:
https://prisonprofessors.com/institution/womens-federal-prison-camp-alderson/
St. Patrick’s Day
4, 2005:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saint_Patrick%27s_Day_Four
https://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/23/nyregion/3rd-antiwar-defendant-is-held-in-contempt.html
Shawn Greenwood,
killed by police Feb. 23, 2010:
https://tompkinscountystructuralracism.org/law-enforcement/
Clare Grady re
Shawn Greenwood:
http://www.buzzsawmag.org/2012/03/22/looking-back-on-local-racism/
Letter from Clare
re Greenwood:
Red Warrior Camp:
https://indiancountrytoday.com/archive/red-warrior-camp-speaks-li4sF4UeOkGWo3qyp0tGtA
https://warriorpublications.wordpress.com/2016/12/11/red-warrior-camp-closes/
Standing Rock,
youth:
https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/27023/the-youth-of-standing-rock
Standing Rock,
prayer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w76mDrIL6qU
Kings Bay
Plowshares Factsheet:
https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/fact-sheet/
Clare’s Sentencing
Statement, 11/12/20:
https://kingsbayplowshares7.org/2020/11/clare-gradys-sentencing-statement-nov-12-2020/
Article printed from CounterPunch.org: https://www.counterpunch.org
URL to article: https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/12/02/clare-grady-at-100-seconds-to-midnight/
Donations can be sent
to Max Obuszewski, Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 431 Notre Dame Lane, Apt. 206,
Baltimore, MD 21212. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski2001 [at] comcast.net.
Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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