Friends,
Patrick O’Neill will speak on August 9 at Baltimore’s Homewood Friends
Meetinghouse, as part of our 34th annual Hiroshima-Nagasaki Commemoration.
Kagiso,
Max
https://religionnews.com/2019/07/10/awaiting-trial-for-breaking-into-a-nuclear-base-7-catholic-activists-are-unrepentant/
Awaiting
trial for breaking into a nuclear base, 7 Catholic activists are unrepentant
July 10, 2019
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7. From left to right: Elizabeth
McAlister, Stephen Kelly, Carmen Trotta, Mark Colville, Martha Hennessy, Clare
Grady and Patrick O’Neill. Photo courtesy of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7
(RNS) — In April of last year, on the 50th anniversary of the
assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a group of seven aging
Catholic activists assembled outside the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St.
Marys, Georgia, and cut a padlock at a maintenance gate.
They were in no rush. It was nighttime. No one was around. And
they knew from previous actions that stealing their way onto a nuclear weapons
facility was actually quite easy.
So before cutting the padlock, they stopped to pray and to
photograph themselves carrying three banners protesting nuclear arms. They
proceeded to the next security fence, assembled for another photo and then,
using bolt cutters, cut the fence.
Patrick O’Neill attempts to deface a nuclear monument with a
hammer at the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in April 2018. Photo courtesy of
the Kings Bay Plowshares 7
At that point, they had broken into a U.S. Navy base that houses
six Trident submarines carrying hundreds of nuclear weapons, many of which have
up to 30 times the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city
of Hiroshima in 1945. The activists split into three groups: One headed to the
base’s administrative building, where the members spilled blood on Navy
insignia affixed to a wall and spray painted anti-war slogans on the walkway;
another ran to a monument to nuclear warfare to bang the statuary with hammers.
The third group went to an area near a set of storage bunkers
for nuclear missiles, where the activists prepared to cut the heavily
electrified fence with bolt cutters fitted with rubber handles. At that point,
roughly an hour after they first entered the base, emergency lights started flashing
and they knew they had been caught.
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, as they are known, each face a
possible 25-year prison sentence, charged with three felonies and a
misdemeanor. Next month (Aug. 7), they are scheduled to appear in federal court
for oral arguments, followed by a trial at a later date.
Part of the graffiti messaging left at the Kings Bay Naval
Submarine Base in April 2018. Photo courtesy of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7
At a time when many faith-based social activists have moved on
to other issues — refugees, poverty, abortion and climate change — these
Catholic pacifists aim to draw attention to the most ominous threat facing
human civilization: nuclear weapons and the danger of global annihilation.
“What kind of world are leaving our children?” asked Patrick
O’Neill, 63, one of the activists, who runs a Catholic Worker house in Garner,
North Carolina, and is out on bail but wearing an ankle monitor. “Now is a good
time to say, ‘Don’t go to sleep. Don’t think these weapons are props.’ We’re on
alert 24/7.”
Crusading against nuclear weapons has become a lonely battle.
For most Christians, like most Americans, it is a distant concern.
“Those who do take this seriously are few and far between and
wouldn’t represent anything like a mass movement within American Christianity,”
said Tyler Wigg-Stevenson, an Anglican priest who formerly chaired the World
Evangelical Alliance’s nuclear weapons task force.
“Then you have these incredible saints that believe so strongly
they’re willing to do these prophetic acts.”
A vision of peace
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 are part of a 39-year-old
anti-nuclear movement called Plowshares, inspired by the pacific prediction of
the biblical prophet Isaiah that the nations of the world shall “beat their swords into plowshares.” Its
activists have made a signature of breaking into nuclear weapons bases to
hammer on buildings and military hardware and pour human blood on them.
They’ve been at it since 1980, when a group led by the brothers
Philip and Daniel Berrigan, both Catholic priests, broke into Building #9 at a
General Electric weapons plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. The Plowshares
8, as they were called, hammered on some missile nose cones and spilled blood
on some blueprints. They were found guilty and sentenced to prison.
This July 25, 1973, file photo shows Rev. Fr. Daniel Berrigan,
right, and some friends participating in a fast and vigil to protest the
bombing in Cambodia, on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
(AP Photo/Ron Frehm)
The Berrigans had first come to national attention during the
anti-Vietnam protests of the 1960s for burning draft records. But by the 1980s,
the era of direct nonviolent action had peaked, replaced by more conventional
tactics such as rallies, petitions and media campaigns. Plowshares remained the
one of the only groups to extend their confrontational but nonviolent tactics
into the no-nukes activism.
All seven of the Kings Bay defendants are members of the
Catholic Worker movement, a collection of about 200 independent houses across the country
that feed and house the poor. Among them are the Rev. Stephen Kelly, 70, a
Jesuit priest; Elizabeth McAlister, 79, a former nun; and Martha Hennessy, 64,
granddaughter of Dorothy Day, who founded the Catholic Worker in 1933 and was
an ardent pacifist.
The seven spent nearly two years plotting their invasion of the
base, planning between rounds of prayer. There was no one event that prompted
the group, though some have cited the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran
nuclear weapons treaty and escalating tensions with that country as a factor.
More than anything, the group wanted to bring renewed attention
to an issue that no longer inspires much public concern: the very real
possibility of a nuclear weapons catastrophe, whether through war, terrorism or
human error. The seven set their sights on Kings Bay, about 40 miles north of
Jacksonville, Florida, because it houses a quarter of the nation’s nuclear
weapons cache and because there had never been a Plowshares action there.
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7. Photo courtesy of the Kings Bay
Plowshares 7
“I have no doubt that nuclear weapons will be detonated,” said
O’Neill. “I don’t know if it’s going to be by a terrorist or by accident. How
do we wake people up?”
Several said they had no regrets. All seven had been jailed
before and were fully aware they faced years-long prison sentences this time
around, too.
“There’s never been a single case in which I’ve been arrested
that I’m not proud of what I’ve done or would not defend to this day,” said
Carmen Trotta, one of the seven who has participated in numerous civil rights
demonstrations. He helps run the St. Joseph Catholic Worker House in New York,
one of the original sites established by Day in the area of Manhattan
historically known as the Bowery.
Facing jail time
To these Catholics, the teachings of the church on nuclear
weapons are clear: They are morally unacceptable. The group welcomed Pope
Francis’ recent statement in which he appeared to
say that even possession of nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes was wrong.
“Do we really want peace?” Francis tweeted last year. “Then
let’s ban all weapons so we don’t have to live in fear of war.”
Carmen Trotta, left, and Elizabeth McAlister hold a sign while
entering the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Georgia. Photo
courtesy of Kings Bay Plowshares 7
Martha Hennessy, left, and Carmen Trotta at Maryhouse in New
York City are two of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. Hennessy is the granddaughter
of Dorothy Day, whose likeness appears in the painting on the bookcase. RNS
photo by Yonat Shimron
So determined is the group that three of the seven activists — Kelly,
McAlister and Mark Colville — declined to accept the conditions of the bail
offered them (an ankle monitor and $50,000 bail) and have remained in the Glynn
County Detention Center in Brunswick, Georgia, since the break-in 15 months
ago.
That’s not to say they welcome their prison sentence. They have
asked for dismissal of the charges because they say nuclear weapons are illegal
under U.S. treaty law as well as international law and, using the Religious
Freedom Restoration Act, they argue the government must take their claims of
sincere religious exercise seriously.
Judges have never imposed maximum sentences against Plowshares
activists, and the defendants are praying for the same leniency this time. With
the exception of Trotta, who is 56, the others are in their 60s and 70s and
dealing with various medical problems.
“I’ll be relieved if I get one year,” said Trotta. “Two years is
a lot harder. Three years is hard to imagine. Five years is unimaginable. But
it’s quite possible. ”
Still, they view any prison sentence as a form of witness to
what Colville called the “criminal justice industrial complex” and as a way to
minister to those confined in it.
Prison, wrote Colville in a letter from jail, “provides the
incredible daily privilege of walking with Jesus in the person of the prisoner,
and of seeing the world the way He did: from the perspective of the bottom.”
Prophetic witness or pride?
Plowshares actions — there have been about 100 — take planning
and volunteer expertise.
“You can’t pull it off just the seven of us,” said O’Neill.
Others helped with logistics, too, but the defendants deflected questions about
details, careful not to tip off the government to their conspirators.
They took equal care in every detail of the action.
Hennessy carried a copy of
Pentagon-official-turned-peace-activist Daniel Ellsberg’s 2017 book, “The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a
Nuclear War Planner,” in her raincoat pocket. As planned, she left it in the
base’s administrative building.
Patrick O’Neill is one of the Plowshares 7. He used a hammer to
try to deface a nuclear monument at the Kings Bay Submarine Base last year.
O’Neill is awaiting trial and wears an ankle monitor. RNS photo by Yonat
Shimron
O’Neill secured hammers from Christian social activist Shane
Claiborne that were made of steel melted down from guns returned through
law-enforcement exchange programs. O’Neill used one on the nuclear monument
display at the base, which he refers to as a shrine to an idol.
Even the words the activists spoke as security forces arrived to
arrest them were carefully selected and memorized: “We come in peace. We mean
you no harm. We’re American citizens. We are unarmed.”
All seven served two months in jail after their arrests on April
5, 2018, before the federal courts allowed them the option of bail.
Now they turn their sights to the upcoming trial.
Magistrate Benjamin Cheesbro of the Southern District Court of
Georgia has recommended that the motions to dismiss the charges, including the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act argument, be denied. The seven are appealing.
O’Neill, who is representing himself, said he doesn’t want an
adversarial relationship with Cheesbro. And when he meets U.S. District Court
Judge Lisa Godbey Wood prior to their trial, he’ll tell her what he told
Cheesbro:
“The way I feel is, there’s a fine line between prophetic
witness and pride. If what we have done is prophetic witness, then it’s of God.
But if it’s a matter of pride, then this whole act was fraudulent,” he said. “I
spent a year and a half with these people prayerfully preparing for this action
and I believe our intention was to serve God.”
Yonat Shimron is an RNS National Reporter and Senior Editor.
© Copyright 2019, Religion News Service
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. 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
No comments:
Post a Comment