The Nuclear Resister

from Jane Stoever

On August 9, at about 7 a.m., Fr. Carl Kabat splashed red paint on a National Security Campus sign at the new Kansas City nuclear weapons plant.

“The deed is done,” Kabat told lawyer Henry Stoever in a call at 7:19 a.m. “I came to the back gate—there was a car (a guard’s car) at the main gate. Two guards are coming.” Kabat said something about splashing paint on a sign and then hung up, reported Stoever. “He sounded happy,” added Stoever.

A Spanish anti-nuclear campaigner has been sent to prison for 17 weeks for refusing to pay €6,000 for what he called “energy and harmful pollutants” as a protest against the Almaraz nuclear power plant, located west of Madrid in the Spanish Extremadura.

“It’s the only option left to me,” said Máximo González García, president of the Association of People Affected by Nuclear Almaraz. He has been campaigning against the two-reactor plant for nearly 20 years. His son, now an amputee, is the only survivor among up to nine people in the immediate Jaraiz de la Vera region diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare bone cancer, following a 1988 radiation leak at the plant. Many other cases of birth defects and rare cancers are reported from the area since the first Almaraz reactor opened in 1981.

Cape Downwinders amped up their campaign to shut down the aging Pilgrim nuclear power plant with a Mad As Hell Mother’s Day Rumble on May 10. “Bring food, noisemakers and all your frustrations – We will make racket” announced the flyer for the event, which began with a picnic and rally at White Horse Beach on the western shore of Cape Cod Bay, next to the 42-year-old reactor. There was song, drumming, three original poems about Pilgrim by Cape resident Marge Piercy, and an update on the shut-down effort in the wake of two reactor shutdowns last winter due to storm threats and damage, including one emergency scram.

Attorney Bill Quigley with Greg, Sr. Megan and Michael at May 2013 trial

This news just in from an attorney for the defendants, Bill Quigley:

“Sixth circuit just ruled. Defendants are to be released on their own recognizance.  Immediately.”

Details to follow, including confirmation of their release from prison!

From the Transform Now Plowshares website

Sixth circuit orders immediate release of Michael, Megan and Greg

 May 15, 2015

photo by Ralph Hutchison

A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has overturned the sabotage convictions of Megan Rice, Michael Walli and Greg Boertje-Obed, the Transform Now Plowshares nuclear disarmament activists who were arrested inside the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee on July 28, 2012. They were convicted in May, 2013 of sabotage and depredation of government property for cutting through four fences to reach an enriched uranium storage fortress where, the panel notes, “the trio spray-painted antiwar slogans, hung crime tape and banners with biblical phrases, splashed blood, and sang hymns.”

In its 2-1 decision, the panel found the three lacked the requisite intent of an accused saboteur to “injure the national defense”, because their actions, while damaging property and motivated by a desire for disarmament, did not functionally affect the nation’s ability to initiate or defend attacks.