The International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons
has been observed annually since 2014. Pursuant to the resolutions of the
General Assembly, Member States, the United Nations system and civil society,
including non-governmental organizations, academia, parliamentarians, the mass
media and individuals are encouraged to commemorate and promote the
International Day through enhancing public awareness and education about the
threat posed to humanity by nuclear weapons and the necessity for their total
elimination.
To observe the International Day, the United Nations is
supporting events both in New York and Geneva. United Nations Information
Centres around the world are encouraged to raise awareness to the observance of
International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons.
Join the Baltimore Nonviolence Center in a Vigil to celebrate the
International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons on Sat., Sept.
26 from noon to 1 PM at 33rd and N. Charles Sts. What better place than across
the street from Johns Hopkins University, a major weapons contractor. You may
consider contacting President Ron Daniels and telling him that the university
should reject all military contracts, including those for killer drone and
nuclear weapons research. The president’s mailing address is Office of the President, 242 Garland Hall, The Johns
Hopkins University, 3400 N. Charles St., Baltimore, Maryland 21218. You
can also reach his office by Phone: (410) 516-8068, Fax: (410) 516-6097 or email: president@jhu.edu. Contact Max at mobuszewski2001 at Comcast
dot net or 410-323-1607.
http://accuracy.org/release/why-is-barr-prosecuting-catholic-peace-activists/
Why Is
Barr Prosecuting Catholic Peace Activists?
September 24, 2020
On Wednesday at the
National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, Attorney General William Barr denounced “a
new orthodoxy that is actively hostile to religion,” arguing that “militant
secularists” are trying to move religion out of the public square and out of
conversations on the common good. Trump also spoke and Barr accepted an award
from the group. The event was held online and was delayed from its originally
scheduled date in March.
The Catholic News Agency reported: “‘Separation of church and state does not mean — and
never did mean — separation of religion and civics,’ said Barr, as he insisted
Catholics should be more involved in public life through advocating for
religious freedom.”
As Attorney General, Barr has
continued to prosecute seven Catholic activists who attempted to fulfill the
Biblical calling to turn swords into plowshares. At their trial last year, they were prevented from mounting a series of
defenses, including invoking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Six of the
defendants have sentencing dates currently scheduled for Oct 15 and 16.
MARK
COLVILLE, markcolville9761@gmail.com, @amistadobrero
One of the seven Catholic
Plowshares activists, Colville is
co-founder of the Amistad Catholic Worker House in New Haven with his wife
Luz Catarineau. In late December, the New Haven Register wrote: “For their sustained,
compassionate approach to building and supporting their community and for their
lived opposition to war and violence, the Colvilles are the New Haven
Register’s Persons of the Year.”
Colville, with the other six
activists — known as the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 — entered a major nuclear weapons
facility in Georgia on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination
of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. They were protesting U.S. nuclear weapons policy
and sought to “nonviolently and symbolically disarm the Trident nuclear
submarine base at Kings Bay.” Colville used a hammer made from melted-down guns
to smash parts of a shrine to nuclear weapons at the facility.
One of the seven, Father Steven
Kelly, a Jesuit priest, is in jail, where he has been for 29 months. Others,
like Elizabeth McAlister, the elderly widow of Philip Berrigan, spent over 17
months in jail prior to trial with little media attention. Colville spent over
a year in jail. The other defendants are Clare Grady of Ithaca, New York,
Martha Hennessy from Vermont (the granddaughter of Dorothy Day who founded the
Catholic Worker movement), Carmen Trotta from New York and Patrick O’Neill
of North Carolina — who gave oral arguments regarding religious freedom.
They were
supported in their efforts by many in the clergy, including Rev. Desmond Tutu of South Africa.
Said Colville: “The Trident
Submarine is an idolatrous blasphemy against God. It’s mere existence refutes
all of the basic tenets of faith that I have embraced as a Christian. While our
leaders frequently invoke Christianity as this nation’s heritage, they wantonly
violate its most basic command, namely, that we are to place our ultimate
security in God alone, not in a weapon or a nation. Trident is an omnipresent
threat to all life on the planet, and it has never been more urgent that the
human community, and particularly the people of the United States, confront
exactly what that reality means: We stand poised to murder our own children,
for no other reason than to preserve our nation’s dominance in the world. This
is the definition of idolatry. This is the definition of insanity.”
Bill
Ofenloch, billcpf@aol.com, @kingsbayplow7
Mary Anne Grady Flores, gradyflores08@gmail.com
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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