Fr. Carl Kabat splashes paint on huge sign at NNSA’s nuke-parts plant in Kansas City

Posted on July 5, 2014

C Kabat paint, 7.4.14, from northby Jane Stoever, PeaceWorks, Kansas City

Carl Kabat, 80, a priest in the Order of Mary Immaculate, splashed paint on the huge entry sign at the National Security Campus at 10 a.m. on July 4. He then sat by the sign, awaiting arrest.

This was Kabat’s fourth July “interdependence action” in successive years at the so-called campus, the new home for the Kansas City Plant (in Kansas City, Missouri), where the National Nuclear Security Administration now makes and procures non-nuclear parts for nuclear weapons.

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Arrests, injuries during forcible removable at protest camps at site of electric tower construction for S. Korean nuclear power plant

Posted on June 12, 2014
140255785257_20140613

Priests, nuns and local residents form a human chain and refuse to leave the protest camp blocking the construction site of electronic transmission tower No. 129, June 11. (By Kim Bong-gyu, Hankyoreh staff photographer)

KEPCO says construction of power towers back on track

from The Korea Times  by Kim Se-jeong

Police on Wednesday (june 11) forcibly removed sit-in camps where some residents of Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, have been protesting for years against a power transmission tower project.

The action prompted a violent clash with the protesters. Witnesses said 19 people sustained injuries during the clash. Fourteen were taken to a local hospital.

For the past few years, hundreds of villagers have set up makeshift houses on the tops of mountains in Milyang to stop the construction of high-voltage transmission towers by the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp., or KEPCO.

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Two arrests at UK nuclear weapons site blockade

Posted on June 11, 2014
ActionAWE photo

ActionAWE photo

from ActionAWE

The Burghfield wing of the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) in Berkshire has seen its biggest protest in years, with the three road entrances to the site blocked for nearly five hours the morning of June 9 in a blockade organised by Trident Ploughshares as part of the ongoing ActionAWE grassroots campaign dedicated to halting nuclear weapons production at the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

Opponents of the Trident nuclear weapons system locked themselves to cars and to each other to prevent traffic entering the site to carry out construction work. Although there have been protests at the site in the past, this is the first time that an unannounced protest has blocked access via all three roads.

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Activists arrested during drone and nuclear weapon protests in Missouri – part of Trifecta Resista weekend

Posted on June 10, 2014
photo by Shane Franklin

photo by Shane Franklin

by Jane Stoever and Ann Suellentrop

PeaceWorks – Kansas City held 4 actions over the May 31-June 1 weekend. On Saturday morning, May 31, we held two rallies in Leavenworth, Kansas. At one rally, we sought pardon for Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. She’s begun serving 35 years there for revealing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The second rally, two miles up the road at the Federal Penitentiary, called for pardon for Greg Boertje-Obed, now serving about 5 years in the pen for the Y-12 Transform Now Plowshares action against nuclear weapons at the uranium processing site in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

Saturday afternoon we went to the old Kansas City Plant for making parts for nuclear weapons, to demand comprehensive cleanup of about 900 known toxins there. The contaminants have poisoned workers at the Kansas City Plant and other federal agencies at the Bannister Federal Complex.

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Four women arrested at Mother’s Day protest at Pilgrim nuclear power plant

Posted on May 28, 2014

10341598_10152174632436156_5760899932357970106_nby Christine Legere, from the Cape Cod Times

May 12, 2014

PLYMOUTH – Four members of a Cape-based activist group were arrested Sunday, May 11 for trespassing onto the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station property to plant flowers.

Diane Turco, a Harwich resident and founder of the Cape Downwinders, and group members Sarah Thacher and Susan Carpenter of Dennis, and Mary Conathan of Chatham, were arraigned Monday in Plymouth District Court on charges of trespassing.

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A Pivot on the Peace Island

Posted on May 24, 2014

resistance_at_the_gateby Kathy Kelly

[Followed by an article by Dr. Hakim]

May 24, 2014

Jeju Island, South Korea – For the past two weeks, I’ve been in the Republic of Korea (ROK), as a guest of peace activists living in Gangjeong Village on ROK’s Jeju Island. Gangjeong is one of the ROK’s smallest villages, yet activists here, in their struggle against the construction of a massive naval base, have inspired people around the world.

Since 2007, activists have risked arrests, imprisonment, heavy fines and wildly excessive use of police force to resist the desecration caused as mega-corporations like Samsung and Daelim build a base to accommodate U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines for their missions throughout Asia. The base fits the regional needs of the U.S. for a maritime military outpost that would enable it to continue developing its Asia Pivot strategy, gradually building towards and in the process provoking superpower conflict with China.

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SOA Watch activists arrested while pasting posters on Washington, D.C. building

Posted on May 21, 2014

ArtIsNotACrimeSMfrom SOA Watch

Last week, Washington, DC activists helped kick off SOA Watch’s poster campaign to remember the martyrs and expose the killers. On Wednesday, May 14, a group of about a dozen activists came together to paste up a giant mural on the streets of the Adams Morgan neighborhood of Washington, DC.

Though the activists were peaceful in their actions, DC police decided that political art was unacceptable in the district. After the artwork was completed, four of the activists were handcuffed, arrested and held for 6 hours before being charged with “defacing public or private property.” The charge carries a maximum penalty of 6 months in prison and a $1,000 fine. SOA Watch activists Dominique Diaddigo-Cash, Gail Taylor, Maria Luisa Rosal and Nico Udu-gama will be arraigned in US Superior Court on June 5, 2014. The best way to stand in solidarity with the targeted activists, and to push back against the criminalization of dissent, is to keep up the resistance!

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Retired attorney and Catholic priest arrested at Volk Field drone base during air show

Posted on May 20, 2014

IMG_1848from Bonnie Block

Six hardy souls vigiled at the gates of Volk Field in Wisconsin on May 17 for over an hour with a new banner, a kite flying, and Kathy’s colorful signs saying “Fly Kites, Not Drones” which was repeated on our new t-shirts. Vigilers were Kathy (the birthday woman), Mary Beth, Jim, Cassandra, Charles, and me. Charles had to leave for his meal program dishwashing duties so he dropped off Jim and me at Nelson Park. There were carnival rides and a stage with a National Guard musical group from Peoria, IL but there weren’t many people there at all.

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Why South Korean peace activists walked into a prison on their own feet

Posted on May 20, 2014
1966922_10154129986080076_2890346722357177719_n

World without War photo

from Jeewoo Yeo

Yeo-ok Yang and Jungmin Choi (activists with World Without War) and Reverend Bora Im (of Hyanglin Church) were put into prison on May 20.

They were sentenced to pay a fine of two million won each (approximately 2,000 USD) for taking a direct action to block the construction of Jeju Naval Base, which had been illegally undertaken without an agreement with local residents.

Instead of paying the fine, they chose to be imprisoned in a workhouse. Two million won is a large amount money for an activist. But that is not the main reason of their choices. They thought it is a violation of the constitutional rights to the freedom of assembly and association to impose heavy fines on activists taking a thoroughly nonviolent way of resistance against wrongful state policies.

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Daring dawn blockade of Berkshire’s nuclear weapons factory

Posted on May 20, 2014
photo by Nina Carter-Brown

photo by Nina Carter-Brown

Early in the morning of May 19, a group of people in England began blockading the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) site at Burghfield, near Reading. The protesters, acting as part of ActionAWE, a campaign of nonviolent direct action, are trying to disrupt construction of a new nuclear warhead factory on the site.

The eight protesters, aged between 19 and 40, were locked together using handcuffs inside “lock-on” devices – made from drainpipes and vegetable oil drums filled with concrete in order to block the gate to the construction site to prevent further work on the site. Traffic queued up, unable to enter the facility. The Christian protesters sang hymns.  The blockade ended after four hours.

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