The Nuclear Resister networks the anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance movement while acting as a clearinghouse for information about contemporary nonviolent resistance to war and the nuclear threat. Our emphasis is on support for the women and men jailed for these actions. This blog is the online companion to the quarterly Nuclear Resister newsletter, a more comprehensive chronicle.
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Jack & Felice Cohen-Joppa
December 2020
Dear friends,
As John Lennon sings in his song Beautiful Boy: “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.” We think that pretty well sums up a lot of 2020! It certainly describes the whirlwind of recent months for us…
The new issue of the Nuclear Resister newsletter (12 pages instead of 8) should arrive in your mail during the first week of the new year — later than we hoped for. This fall our long-time newsletter printer closed up shop, another business casualty of the COVID pandemic. We finally found a new printer in Phoenix, but the holiday-schedule press time was booked until the very end of the year.
We write now with deep gratitude for the support that has kept the important work of the Nuclear Resister going for 40 years. Thank you! We have been concerned about the Nuclear Resister’s credit union account during the difficult times we all find ourselves in, and know that it might be a challenging time for some people to make donations. But we need to ask you as 2020 draws to a close, if you are able, to make a contribution now to help ensure that the work of the Nuclear Resister continues through 2021.
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Climate Activists blockade British military command center in Bristol. Photo by Roland Dye.
At about 6.30am, before dawn, on Friday, December 11, a coalition of Extinction Rebellion (XR) groups blockaded the vast MoD centre in north Bristol. Around forty activists from XR Bristol, Christian Climate Action, XR Peace and others unloaded wooden towers and a tripod to seal off all three vehicle entrances. Banners were strung across the roads and people clipped their arms into lockon tubes.
The date chosen was the fifth anniversary of the Paris Agreement pledging to keep climate change below 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Asked by police why they took action, Michael Truesdale of XR Bristol told them, “Five years ago, the Paris Agreement gave me hope. It was a lie. We have stopped nothing. Our scientists are telling us that the 1.5° limit we imagined at that summit is now a pipe dream, and we should prepare for a 4° rise in global temperatures. At that point, or sooner, society would collapse as the oceans rise, soil dries and total war envelopes the planet. The Climate Crisis will create war, whilst war is also contributing to the climate crisis. Both from the massive direct emissions – the US military being the largest polluter in the world, and as a barrier to positive international relations. We must break the cycle.”
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by Jack Cohen-Joppa, The Nuclear Resister
Carmen Trotta is sentenced to 14 months in prison; Clare Grady is sentenced to 12 months plus a day; Martha Hennessy is sentenced to ten months
from the Kings Bay Plowshares
On November 12, two more of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 were sentenced by video conferencing with Judge Lisa Godbey Wood in federal court in Brunswick, Georgia. They both received less time than was expected according to the sentencing guidelines prepared by the probation department.
Carmen Trotta was sentenced to 14 months in prison in the morning session. This was a downward departure based on the judge granting his objection that the seriousness of his criminal history was overstated by the probation report. He only has four misdemeanor convictions for demonstration related arrests. However, the judge overruled numerous other objections from the defense, particularly to the increases for risk of death and lack of acceptance of responsibility. Carmen vigorously disputed these issues to no avail.
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From Ed Horgan, Ireland Veterans for Peace» Read more…
from the Kings Bay Plowshares media team» Read more…
On October 15, Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J. was sentenced to 33 months in prison for his part in the Kings Bay Plowshares nuclear disarmament action of April 2018. Federal judge Lisa Godbey Wood also ordered that Kelly pay restitution of $33,503.51, jointly and severally with his six codefendants, and a special assessment of $310. Recognizing the Jesuit priest’s indigence, the court waived any fine and interest payments on the restitution. Three years of supervised probation will follow his prison term, with the conditions that Kelly must surrender all financial information requested by the probation office, make no applications for credit, and cooperate with submitting a DNA sample.» Read more…
Steve Kelly at 2015 Pacific Life Community blockade of Lockheed Martin, CA. Photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa
Presentencing Declaration of Pro Se Defendant’s Conscientious Objection To and Non-compliance With Any and All Post-incarceration Conditions
[This statement was filed with the court before Fr. Steve Kelly’s October 15, 2020 sentencing.]
While still in chains, I, pro se defendant Stephen Michael Kelly, S.J., file this declaration in an attempt to remove any ambiguity and avoid all misunderstanding, come time of sentencing.
I assert the innocence of the Kings Bay Plowshares. But this statement is my own declaration. Both my conscientious objection and my Religious Freedom Restoration Act testimony are attempts to fulfill the mandate of the Nuremberg Accords. This witness has me confronting and engaged with the omnicidal policies of the U.S. government. Recourse to appeal is futile, pathetic, and dangerous because all the judiciary’s rulings precluded our jury from hearing any defense. The circuit, appeal, the entire judiciary has thwarted redress that would fulfill the purpose and mandate of the signatories of the Nuremberg Accords. For this reason, I am a political prisoner of conscience for Christ. The judiciary has been unable to see the Isaian vision as a way out of this spiral of violence. The Isaiah 2:4 vision is an imperative to conversion. The judiciary dangerously legitimizes a nuclear holocaust in following previous rulings. The precedents, when followed, have functioned as a gag order. This court would not allow the jury, the triers of fact, to hear what was recognized in our Religious Freedom Restoration Act evidence; we were at the Trident base to preach against the sin that flourishes in weapons of mass destruction.
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photo by Joyce Donovan
by Patrick O’Neill
September 24, 2020
(RNS) — For more than 850 days, the Rev. Stephen Kelly, a Jesuit priest, has hunkered down in a south Georgia jail in relative obscurity.
On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination, Kelly and I cut a padlock on a perimeter fence gate at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, the Atlantic home port of the Trident submarine, located in St. Marys, Georgia.
Five other Catholic peace activists passed through that gate with us that evening as we made our way to three different parts of the nuclear base to, in the words of the biblical prophet Isaiah, “beat swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks.”
The U.S. fleet of Trident subs, each armed with D-5 nuclear missiles, carry enough firepower to essentially end the human experiment.
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