The Nuclear Resister

Police move in to arrest Ash and Claudia, who had occupied a small robot tank being towed into the exhibition centre – photo by WagePeace

by Jack Cohen-Joppa, from reports by WagePeace

A broad spectrum of Australian activists returned to Meanjin (Brisbane) during the first week of October for a Festival of Resistance and nonviolent actions to disrupt Land Forces 2022, the largest weapons expo in the Southern Hemisphere at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (BCC). As they had last year, organizers welcomed many diverse constituencies – radical youth, Quaker grannies, Aboriginal leaders, refugees, climate activists, veterans, a clown army, musicians and more – into the action planning.

It was a festival of ideas, story telling and culture with the voices of First Nations and West Papuan people central. The stated goal was to “disrupt, interrupt, and obfuscate [the arms dealers’] efforts to generate conflict as the by-product of profit”, the organizers invited all who shared that goal to participate and plan Festival events according to just two rules:

Photo by Chris Knudson

Killer Drone Base Blockaded to Oppose Remote-Controlled Killing of Humans

from Shut Down Creech

Anti-drone activists, in Nevada for a week-long protest at a U.S. assassin drone base north of Las Vegas, continued their resistance on Wednesday morning, October 19 with a nonviolent blockade of the entrance road into Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs. After nearly 30 minutes, three protesters were arrested.

Dozens – maybe hundreds – of vehicles were stalled on the highway trying to enter the base. Protesters hope to motivate Air Force personnel involved in the U.S. drone program to follow their conscience and no longer participate.

Marion Kuepker & John LaForge at the NPT Review Conference in NY on August 1

from Nukewatch

LUCK, Wisconsin – A U.S. peace activist from Luck, Wisconsin has been ordered by a German court to serve 50 days in jail there after he refused to pay 600 Euros in fines for two trespass convictions stemming from protests against the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Base, 80 miles southeast of Cologne.

      John LaForge, 66, a Duluth native and long-time staff person of the anti-nuclear group Nukewatch, participated in two “go-in” actions at the German base in 2018. The first on July 15 involved eighteen people who gained entry to the base by clipping through the chain link fence on a Sunday morning in broad daylight. The second, on August 6, the anniversary of the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima, saw LaForge and Susan Crane of Redwood City, California sneak inside the base and climb atop a bunker which likely housed some of the approximately twenty U.S. “B61” thermonuclear gravity bombs stationed there.*

photo by Karol Milner

from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action

Approximately 40 people were present on August 8th at a flash mob demonstration against Trident nuclear weapons at the Bangor submarine base. The demonstration was in the roadway, and blocked traffic entering the Main Gate of the Trident nuclear submarine base during rush hour traffic. Thirteen demonstrators were detained and cited by authorities.

photo by Ellen Davidson

from Ed Hedemann
On August 2, for almost four hours on a sunny and rather hot Tuesday, the NYC War Resisters League along with several other peace, social justice and environmental organizations were part of a nonviolent sit-in at the U.S. Mission during the second day of the U.N.’s month-long Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Review Conference. About 100 participated in the demonstration, eleven of whom were eventually arrested while blocking the two doors to the U.S. Mission.