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. » Read more…
from the Ledger-Enquirer
by Ben Wright
One School of Americas Watch protester was sentenced to five years probation and another was slapped with a maximum $5,000 fine Thursday for trespassing onto Fort Benning during the annual protest in November.
U.S. Magistrate Stephen Hyles sentenced Robert Norman Chantal, 62, of Americus to five years probation after pleading guilty and stating that he wouldn’t enter the post again. Chantal was dressed in a sad clown face during the Nov. 23 protest on Benning Road to close the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.
Calling 83-year-old Eve Tetaz a bad citizen, the judge sentenced the longtime activist to pay a $5,000 fine but the woman with a many medical issues avoided prison time. She must pay the fine in 30 days or make arrangements, one of her attorneys said outside District Court.
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Bonnie Urfer
from counter punch
by John LaForge
A former Army Brigadier General was busted two ranks and fined $20,000 this year after being charged with sexual assault of an Army Captain — a subordinate he reportedly threatened to kill if she revealed their affair. Jeffrey A. Sinclair’s multiple convictions should have gotten him thrown out of the military, sent to prison and registered as a sexual predator, but the judge in the case, Col. James L. Pohl, allowed him to retire as a Lt. Col. with full benefits and a $105,000 pension. Sinclair, 51, spent 28 years in the Army.
Meanwhile Nukewatch just celebrated the retirement of peace activist Bonnie Urfer, 62, who has stopped answering the Nukewatch phone after co-directing here for 28 years.
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The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has assigned the oral argument on the sabotage charge in the case of the Transform Now Plowshares – Greg Boertje-Obed, Michael Walli and Sr. Megan Rice – for March 12 at 9 a.m. in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Each side will be given 15 minutes to argue. The decision will probably come out weeks later.
For more information about the Transform Now Plowshares, click here.
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photo by Shane Franklin
by Kathy Kelly
January 22, 2015
The Bureau of Prisons contacted me today, assigning me a prison number and a new address: for the next 90 days, beginning tomorrow, I’ll live at FMC Lexington, in the satellite prison camp for women, adjacent to Lexington’s federal medical center for men. Very early tomorrow morning, Buddy Bell, Cassandra Dixon, and Paco and Silver, two house guests whom we first met in protests on South Korea’s Jeju Island, will travel with me to Kentucky and deliver me to the satellite women’s prison outside the Federal Medical Center for men.
by Jane Stoever
Kathy Kelly, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence (based in Chicago), was sentenced on December 10 to three months in federal prison for crossing a line on the entry road to Whiteman Air Force Base near Knob Noster, Missouri on June 1. Kelly was opposing all drone warfare, including drones guided by remote control from Whiteman.
Photo by L. Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
Activists from a local peace group blocked the main gate and staged a mock funeral at the Navy’s West Coast Trident nuclear submarine base in an act of civil resistance to nuclear weapons.
Over sixty people participated in Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action’s annual celebration of Martin Luther King Jr’s life and legacy on Saturday, January 17, 2015. The event concluded with a vigil and nonviolent direct action at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Silverdale, Washington.
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Brandywine Peace Community photo
from the Brandywine Peace Community
On Saturday, January 17, people stood in front of the Lockheed Martin complex in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania as the voice of Dr. King echoed over the area behind the King of Prussia Mall with the sound of excepts of his sermons and speeches. There was also bell-tolling, peace songs by Tom Mullian, a litany drawn from Dr. King’s 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech with the response: Lives Matter, Damn Their War Profits…Wage Justice, Wage Peace.
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Drone protester Bonny Mahoney of Syracuse, New York was convicted by Judge David S. Gideon in DeWitt Town Court on January 16 on a single count of trespass stemming from her arrest during a nonviolent protest at Hancock Air National Guard Base on April 28, 2013.
When Mahoney arrived in court on January 15 for her jury trial on charges of obstructing governmental administration (OGA) and 2 counts of disorderly conduct (DisCon), she was arraigned on a new charge (trespass) stemming from the same event where she was arrested 17 months earlier with 30 other protesters. Her reasonable request for some time to modify her preparations was refused.
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photo by Barry Binks
On January 6, the monthly Catholic Worker vigil at the Livermore nuclear weapons lab in California was joined by members of Tri-Valley CAREs, the local nuclear abolitionist group that keeps a critical eye on activity at Livermore.
The particular focus of the January vigil was to oppose the planned use of plutonium in the National Ignition Facility (NIF), a big-budget science project long trumpeted to advance research on fusion energy. But in December, the lab made a sudden announcement that plutonium experiments would begin at NIF in January, bringing the project back to its stealth roots as an advanced nuclear weapons engineering enterprise.
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by Jane Stoever
After a 90 minute trial on January 16, 2015, at the Kansas City, Missouri Municipal Court, Judge Elena Franco found that the City had failed to prove that Henry Stoever had the “mens rea” (guilty intent, criminal mind) for conviction of trespass. Judge Franco also found that the City witness had failed to prove where the property line was located at the new Honeywell nuclear weapons production, procurement and assembly plant in southern Kansas City, Missouri. This plant makes, procures and assembles 85% of the non-nuclear parts of a nuclear weapon. Early in the trial, Henry had played the video for the judge that showed him and two companions crossing the line.
When Judge Franco declared Henry “not guilty,” the 31 members in the audience burst into applause. Henry shook the hands of Judge Franco, the City Prosecutor, and the complaining witness, and then visited with supporters outside the courtroom, wiping back tears of joy.
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