The Nuclear Resister

Photo by Michelle Shiloh

JULY 29 UPDATE: Someone anonymously paid Dennis DuVall’s fine and he was released from prison.

On July 22, accompanied by his wife and friends, 82-year-old Dennis DuVall reported to Bautzen prison in Germany. The American citizen, who has lived in Germany for six years, will be serving a 90 day sentence for nonpayment of fines for protest actions at Büchel air base, where U.S. nuclear weapons are stored. The Veterans for Peace member spent 60 days in the same prison in 2023, also for actions at Büchel.

Photo by David Solnit

Click here for the latest update, “10,000 arrests demand CEASEFIRE NOW!”

From the Nuclear Resister

(This chronicle of resistance is published in issues #202 and #203/204 of the Nuclear Resister newsletter, and online at nukeresister.org. Last updated on July 11.)

Since October of 2023, thousands of protests and actions around the world have called for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In this day-by-day record of dissent, the Nuclear Resister has chronicled more than 9,000 arrests (and counting) in the U.S. and Canada on over 350 occasions across more than 125 cities and towns in 36 states and 5 provinces. Over 3,400 of these arrests have taken place on at least 70 university campuses. It marks the largest surge of anti-war arrests since mid-April, 2003, when the Nuclear Resister reported over 7,500 anti-war arrests in the U.S. alone in the lead-up to and first weeks of the second U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Susan van der Hijden, Susan Crane and Gerd Büntzly at Rohrbach prison on June 4 (Peace Walk Büchel 2024 photo)

JULY 30 UPDATE: Susan Crane and Susan van der Hijden are now serving their time at an open (lower security) prison in Koblenz. You can write to them individually at JVA Koblenz – Offener Vollzug, Simmerner Str. 14a, 56075 Koblenz, Germany.

You can read their prison reflections here and here.

from Nukewatch

On Tuesday, June 4, the first ever female U.S. peace activist sentenced to prison in Germany in the 25-year-long campaign demanding the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force base, began her sentence of 229 days, the longest ever imposed in the campaign.

Susan Crane, 80, from Redwood City, California, along with Dutch citizen Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam, both began serving “substitute” sentences Tuesday  — for nonpayment of financial penalties — at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison in Rhineland-Palatinate. Susan van der Hijden was given a 115 day sentence, resulting from Büchel actions in 2018 and 2019.

Crane was convicted September 20, 2021 in Koblenz Regional Court in Germany on six counts of trespass stemming from repeated protests against the nuclear weapons “forward deployed” by the United States at Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne.

Photo by John LaForge of Jane Stoever & Scot Bohl placing crime scene tape on earth moving machines at H-bomb factory expansion site.

from PeaceWorks Kansas City

50 resist nuclear bomb production in KC; 10 arrested

by Jane Stoever

With workers streaming into the Kansas City Nuclear Security Campus (NSC)—not a campus but a giant factory making parts for nuclear weapons—50 Catholic Workers and friends took action to try to stop production of nuclear weapon parts at the NSC. And—oh, yes—we protested the building of new structures to make the so-called campus twice its size.

Three persons put “crime scene—do not enter” tape on a huge dump truck on the field the NSC needs flattened for the new building to make new nukes. Workmen told us, “We’re just moving dirt,” an amazing disconnect between their labor and the factory to come that will do mechanical/electronic work for US nuclear bombs.