OCTOBER 17, 2016 8:00 AM
Anti-nuke
priest still is spreading the word — and red paint
At 83, the
Rev. Carl Kabat still protests nuclear weapons 2:57
Catholic
priest Carl Kabat, one of the original Plowshares Eight, appeared in Kansas
City Municipal Court for splashing red paint on the door of the Honeywell plant
in South Kansas City. "It's a place of death," Kabat says. Keith
Myers The Kansas City Star
BY DONALD BRADLEY
When the judge called the
defendant’s name for the last hearing of the day, a gruff and hearty “Here!”
came from the back of the courtroom.
The Rev. Carl Kabat, a
Catholic priest, rose and walked to the front of Courtroom G. He’s 83, used a
cane and wore white sneakers.
He wasn’t looking to beat
the rap. He was looking for a fight.
Facing charges of
trespassing and destruction of property for splashing red paint on the door of
the Honeywell plant in south Kansas City on July 4, Kabat wanted to put the
federal government on trial for making nuclear weapons.
“Nuclear weapons are
insane,” Kabat, part of the original Plowshares Eight, said outside before his
appearance in Kansas City Municipal Court. “These things will kill everybody.
When did we vote to have them? No one ever did.”
His is one of the last of
the loud anti-nuke voices from America’s Cold War period.
But right off Wednesday in
court, he hit a problem: Neither the judge nor the prosecutor wanted to hear
testimony about the morality of nuclear weapons. They wanted to limit the talk
to Kabat’s coming onto restricted grounds and letting loose with red paint.
Plus, the witness against
him, the security guard, was way too nice. Darned guy even called him “Father
Kabat.”
As in, when asked by the
prosecutor if the man he detained that day was in the courtroom, the guard,
John Falcon, gestured to the defendant and said, “Father Kabat.”
“And how do you know him?”
the prosecutor asked.
“He’s been a visitor to
our property a few times,” Falcon answered.
Kabat, a priest for 58
years, has been arrested at Honeywell, which makes non-nuclear parts for
nuclear weapons, the past three July Fourths.
That’s just the top part
of his sheet. Kabat has been arrested — he doesn’t know how many times, 35,
maybe 40, at missile bases, defense plants and military installations all over
the country. He’s spent more than 17 years in federal prisons, including a
10-year stretch for breaking into a missile silo in Missouri.
Now, with most of the old
Plowshares group gone — including founders and leaders Daniel and Philip
Berrigan — Kabat carries on the group’s fight, often alone.
But his court appearances
these days lack the high drama of those long ago showdowns when Daniel Berrigan
firestormed trespassing charges into fights about nuclear annihilation.
Kabat thinks authorities
now just want to run him through and get him gone.
He’s usually found guilty,
fined minimal amounts and told to stay away from the Honeywell plant. But his
jail sentence is suspended, and he refuses to pay fines or court costs. He
walks out, and nobody seems to object.
That should be a good
thing for someone’s who’s 83 and from out of town. But for Kabat, victory can
only be had with the bold argument.
“He wants to be taken
seriously,” said Chrissy Kirchhoefer, a friend who drove him from Illinois for
the trial. “He wants the issue taken seriously.”
In court Wednesday, Falcon
told the judge that workers were able to clean the paint off the doors.
On cross examination,
Kabat, acting as his own attorney, asked Falcon if he knew the significance of
using red paint.
Falcon shook his head, and
the prosecutor, Annie Booton, objected to the witness being asked to speculate.
Kabat then asked if Falcon
was old enough to remember Hiroshima.
Falcon again shook his
head, and Booton again objected. Relevance.
Judge Katherine Emke
interrupted the line of questioning and asked Kabat if he had any witnesses to
call.
“Yeah,” Kabat said,
clearly frustrated. “Eisenhower.”
First strike
Kabat’s road to crime
began with a bear hug.
It was Sept. 9, 1980. The
Plowshares Eight entered the General Electric defense plant in King of Prussia,
Pa., which made nose cones for the Mark 12A warheads.
The group had been founded
by the Berrigan brothers, Catholic priests well known for social activism and
anti-war activities in the 1960s. The “Plowshares” name comes from scripture.
Isaiah 2:4 says, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their
spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.”
On that day in
Pennsylvania, as the bunch rushed past a startled security guard, Kabat
embraced the man in a big bear hug. Inside, the others pounded away on nose
cones, poured blood on documents and prayed.
They were all arrested and
convicted at a high-profile trial the following year. Kabat served a year and a
half in prison. In 1984, he and three others, armed with a jackhammer, broke
into a missile silo about 50 miles east of Kansas City. He served nearly 10
years for that.
Since then, Kabat, a
member of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Order, has been arrested at defense
and weapons sites for trespassing, malicious mischief, destruction of property,
burglary, unlawful entry, tampering and more.
In 2009, he used bolt
cutters to break through a chain-link fence in Colorado and climb atop the silo
of a Minuteman III nuclear missile. He draped banners, prayed and waited 45
minutes until Air Force personnel arrived and hauled him away.
Henry Stoever, an Overland
Park attorney, sometimes assists Kabat as he represents himself. Stoever knows
exactly what keeps the old priest going.
“Carl maintains that the
making, assembling, deploying and threatening to use nuclear weapons is
genocide, clear and present,” Stoever said. “He doesn’t waver from that.”
‘Quirky and funny’
Before Kabat’s trial
Wednesday, he and group of like-minded supporters, many from the group
PeaceWorks, gathered in a nearby park.
A cold wind flapped the
flags above them as they prayed.
Then they all walked the
two blocks to court together. These people love Kabat, who lives in his order’s
retirement community in Belleville, Ill. They see him as strong, noble and
faithful to a cause that endures even if diminished consciously by the end of
the Cold War a quarter century ago.
“He’ll never stop, and
he’ll never pay his fines,” said Eric Garbison, a Presbyterian pastor who runs
a Catholic worker house near 12th Street and Benton Boulevard where Kabat stays
when he comes to Kansas City.
Garbison smiled: “He’s
quirky and funny.”
The jacket he wore to
court proved that. It was spattered with red paint.
In the courtroom after
charges were dismissed against a defendant, the man walked past Kabat, who sat
in the back.
“Way to go,” Kabat said,
sticking his hand out for the man to slap.
The man did, and the
bailiff smiled.
Kabat didn’t want to go
free. He wanted to talk about the peril of a world with nuclear bombs and how
several former secretaries of state have called for their removal. According to
his scribbled notes, he wanted to say, “You can not kill babies and women and
old people like me.”
But that wouldn’t happen
this day. He thinks they just wanted him to leave.
Which he did.
But July 4 is coming
again. And Father Carl Kabat, whose calling keeps his old cane busy, may do the
same.
Donald Bradley: 816-234-4182
RELATED
CONTENT
Donations can be sent to the Baltimore
Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph:
410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
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