The Nuclear Resister

Carmen Trotta, Patrick O’Neill, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy and Mark Colville, five of the seven Kings Bay Plowshares (Liz McAlister and Steve Kelly were taken to the courtroom from jail)

from the Kings Bay Plowshares Support Group

The Kings Bay Plowshares, seven Catholic anti-nuclear weapons activists, with their lawyers and over 30 supporters, spent nearly 9 1/2 hours in federal court on November 7 in Brunswick, Georgia. This was the first day of a motions hearing to argue that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) applies to their case. They contend that the three felony and one misdemeanor charges the seven face for their entry onto and actions within the Kings Bay Trident nuclear submarine base on April 4 pose an excessive burden on their religious practice. They ask that the charges be dismissed or reduced. After 7 p.m., with two expert witnesses for the defense and one for the prosecution and only two defendants having been able to testify, Judge Benjamin Cheesbro adjourned the hearing to a future date.

photo by Ann Wright

Report Back:  

4th Annual SHUT DOWN CREECH:  

“STOP the Murder, STOP the War Crimes”

September 30 – October 6, 2018 

by Toby Blomé

Seven protesters arrested while blockading Creech Assassin Drone Base…Just a week later over 75 Somali militants were killed in a single U.S. drone attack!

On Thursday, October 4, as part of this fall’s CODEPINK weeklong anti-drone protest at Creech Assassin Drone Base, seven protesters and a couple of supporters bravely stepped across the base entrance road to temporarily “halt” the cruel and illegal U.S. Air Force’s “remote killing machine” located in the beautiful Nevada desert. While holding large banners across the roadway, our voices repeatedly called out as loudly as we could muster:  “STOP the murder, STOP the War Crimes……The People Demand Peace!”   

The Owls of Bure on the march, June, 2018

In rural northeast France, the 20-year resistance to a planned underground nuclear waste dump still flourishes, despite ongoing police and judicial intimidation. Government largess and a cultivated aura of technical and scientific respectability have coopted local governments, but the opposition has long tilled deep grassroots support.

Authorities have lately sought with no success to divide the opposition by targeting individuals accused of damaging the property of ANDRA, the nuclear waste authority. More were arrested and jailed this summer.

Two summers ago, ANDRA erected unpermitted concrete walls in the communal Lejuc woods, blocking access to the site where they plan to drill ventilation tunnels. The walls were pushed over in an act of collective public sabotage by hundreds of opponents in August, 2016. Fast-forward through two years of escalating struggle to February 22, 2018, when the “Owls” – resisters who had since lived in and among the trees of Lejuc – were forcefully evicted. Police patrols, surveillance and searches of area inhabitants intensified through the spring.

Undeterred, about 3,000 opponents from across France joined a day-long teach-in, march and rally on June 16 in the town of Bar-de-Luc.

Turi Vaccaro hangs his Swords into Plows banner inside the MUOS base in Sicily, December 2, 2014. Photo by Fabio d’Alessandro

Fugitive Italian anti-war activist Turi Vaccaro has been arrested and imprisoned in Gela, Sicily, where he will serve an 11-month, 27-day sentence.

Acting on a warrant issued in November, 2017, DIGOS, the Italian special police, determined that the well-known practitioner of nonviolent direct action would attend this summer’s annual NO MUOS protest camp near Niscemi. MUOS is the acronym of a Pentagon satellite relay station critical to U.S. war making in the Middle East and Africa. The massive dish antennas and transmission towers are planted on land cleared from a beloved cork-oak forest preserve, and their ultra high frequency radiation bathes neighboring residents.

Police observed Vaccaro among hundreds of others on the big August 4 march, where some demonstrators tried to bring down a section of chain-link and barbed wire fence only to be rebuffed by police firing tear gas.

The next day, as protesters relaxed and broke their camp, police decided to execute the warrant for Vaccaro’s arrest and imprisonment on a criminal damage conviction from 2015. When Vaccaro again approached the fence, DIGOS agents shouted at him to stop. Police gave chase on foot as the notoriously barefoot activist scampered away down the rural lane. About fifty activists quickly mobilized a cordon to slow the police pursuit, and Vaccaro disappeared into the countryside. Hours later, police reported his arrest as he hid in thick vegetation less than a mile away.