Case dismissed in Kansas City court against five nuclear disarmament activists

Posted on December 9, 2018

In court after his case was dismissed, Tom Fox used the metaphor of the burning building to convey the urgency for opposing nuclear weapons: “This is our planet on fire. We must stand up and rescue the children and grandchildren!”—Photo by Jeremy Ruzich

Nukes on trial: tables are turned
After prosecution no-show, defendants speak;
verdict — nukes guilty of crimes against humanity

by Jim Hannah

The December 7 hearing at Kansas City Municipal Court was dubbed “Nukes on Trial,” but there was no trial because the lone witness for the prosecution did not come to court; no witness appeared to testify against the five defendants’ act of civil disobedience.

Nonetheless, nuclear weapons were tried and found guilty as the defendants held their own court following Judge Martina Peterson’s dismissal of charges. The five civil resisters spoke forcefully about why they had risked arrest for “crossing the line” at the new nuclear weapons parts plant in south Kansas City on May 28, 2018, during PeaceWorks-KC’s annual Memorial Day resistance.

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Plowshares activist Mark Colville to return to Brunswick, Georgia jail

Posted on December 8, 2018

From Catholic Worker and Kings Bay Plowshares activist Mark Colville, sharing his statement before he self-surrenders to jail in Brunswick, Georgia on December 11, 2018

Greetings in the peace that the world cannot give…

Please pardon my spottiness in terms of keeping in touch with all of you since getting out of jail in early September. It has never been my custom to allow the federal government to indulge the fantasy that supervising me is a legitimate use of their time or resources, and to be honest, it’s been a bit difficult to find my footing out here in minimum security for the past three months. In our case, magistrate judges Baker and Cheesbro have clearly seen fit to use bail, house arrest, curfews and ankle monitors as preemptive punishment for the accused. (This was made amply plain when in that same court, four persons arrested in October for allegedly stealing explosives and ammunition from Kings Bay Naval Base were released without restrictions, on a promise to return for court appearances!) Nevertheless I cheerfully opted to accept these bail conditions on an emergency basis, when it became clear that the Glynn County Jail was not terribly interested in allowing me access to adequate medical care after a diagnosis of skin cancer. As things turned out, this proved to be a good decision, because after two successful surgeries back home in New Haven, I’ve been given a clean bill of health with no further follow-up care required.

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NCR’s Fox crosses the line, goes to trial to protest nuclear weapons

Posted on December 4, 2018

Tom Fox at the 2018 Memorial Day protest at the Kansas City National Security Campus May 28 in Kansas City, Missouri (Jeff Davis)

From the National Catholic Reporter

by Thomas Fox

December 3, 2018

I go to trial Dec. 7.

With four other nuclear weapons protesters, I will appear in Kansas City, Missouri, Municipal Court, charged with trespassing at a sprawling 122-acre nuclear weapons manufacturing complex 12 miles south of the city. It’s officially called the Kansas City National Security Campus, conjuring up images of college courses being taught, not weapons capable of leveling cities being built there.

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Religious Freedom Restoration Act motions hearings for Kings Bay Plowshares

Posted on November 8, 2018

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.

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Come to Nevada – Walk for peace, resist nuclear weapons, stand for indigenous people’s rights and fill the jails!

Posted on November 3, 2018

Photo by Seamus Knight

An Invitation from the Nevada Desert Experience, April 13-19, 2019

by Brian Terrell

On Indigenous People’s Day, formerly known as Columbus Day, October 8, 2018, Nye County, Nevada, prosecutors and Sheriff’s deputies ended a three decades old policy concerning arrests of protesters at the Nevada National Security Site, NNSS, formerly known as the Nevada Test Site, 60 miles from Las Vegas.

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Four arrests during road blockade into Beale drone base

Posted on October 31, 2018

4 Arrested on October 30 While Blocking Military Drone Base; 
Traffic Blocked at Beale Air Force Base Entrance for Nearly an Hour

BEALE AIR FORCE BASE, near Wheatland, California – Four demonstrators were arrested early in the morning of Tuesday, October 30 during a protest in opposition of the ongoing 17-year U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan and U.S. occupation of one of the poorest countries in the world. 

For nearly an hour, traffic was backed up for a half mile or more down two merging roads as protesters – arriving in the dark of early morning – blocked the main entrance road into Beale Air Force Base, near Wheatland, California. 

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After three decades, trespass prosecutions resume at Nevada nuclear test site

Posted on October 29, 2018

Nevada Desert Experience photo

by Jack Cohen-Joppa, the Nuclear Resister

With the United States ready to burst from the starting gate in a new nuclear arms race, a recent change in policy aims to rein in any renewed protest at the U.S. nuclear weapons test site in Nevada.

On October 8, Marc Page-Collogne was arrested with two others when they stepped across the line at the Mercury gate. He was jailed for a few hours and released pending trial for trespass on December 3.

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Seven peace activists arrested at Creech drone base on October 4

Posted on October 28, 2018

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!”   

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Burghfield bomb factory blockaded by anti-Trident protesters

Posted on October 24, 2018

Trident Ploughshares photo

From Trident Ploughshares

Early on the morning of October 24, a group of Trident Ploughshares activists from across the U.K. converged on Burghfield Atomic Weapons Establishment near Burghfield. They blocked approach roads, preventing workers from entering.

Hidden in the leafy lanes of Berkshire, Burghfield A.W.E. and it’s partner facility Aldermaston are where the U.K.’’s nuclear warheads are planned and produced before being loaded onto lorries for trucking up public roads to the Trident submarine fleet in Scotland. The Mearings, a private road with access to the Main gate of AWE Burghfield, was blocked at both ends by a car with two people locked to it. The construction gate has a line of five people locked across it with their arms in “lock-on” tubes.

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Nuclear dump opponent jailed in France

Posted on August 31, 2018

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.

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