Anti-Nuclear Activist, Bonnie Urfer, Fights Crime in Sentencing Statement

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According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Leonard Peltier has been moved from Oklahoma City to the U.S. Penitentiary at Coleman, Florida.
The United States Penitentiary I in Coleman is a high security facility located in central Florida approximately 50 miles northwest of Orlando, 60 miles northeast of Tampa, and 35 miles south of Ocala.
LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132
USP COLEMAN I
U.S. PENITENTIARY
P.O. BOX 1033
COLEMAN, FL 33521
This is nearly 2,000 miles from Leonard’s Nation,
the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians,
in North Dakota!
Tell the Federal Bureau of Prisons
that the only acceptable transfer
is one to a medium security facility
in close proximity to
(within a 500-mile radius of)
his family and Nation.
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From the Disarm Now Plowshares blog
A Plowshares activist was released on September 12 after serving the majority of her sentence, only to be promptly arrested for allegedly violating the terms of her probation.
Lynne Greenwald was released earlier today from the SeaTac Federal Detention Center in Washington State after serving five and a half months of a six month sentence for her participation in the 2009 Disarm Now Plowshares action at the Bangor Trident nuclear submarine base and Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific.
Greenwald is a grandmother, retired social worker, peace activist, and until her time in prison worked at Irma Gary House, a transitional house for women recently released from prisons in Washington State.
Greenwald arrived at the Federal Progress House (the organization that was to provide community supervision while she is under house arrest for the remaining two weeks of her sentence) before noon as she had been instructed by Bureau of Prisons (BOP) officials. While working through her paperwork U.S. Marshals arrived and arrested Greenwald for allegedly violating her conditions of release. They transported her to a holding cell in Tacoma awaiting transport back to the SeaTac Federal Detention Center this evening.
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Y12 Resisters’ Sentencing Begins
report from the website of the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance – http://orepa.org/first-report-on-sentencing-of-y12-resisters/
MONDAY morning, September 12, 2011 • Jean Gump
Jean Gump was the first of the July 2010 Y12 Resisters to be sentenced in federal court in Knoxville. Jean was not present, but was represented by Francis Lloyd. After hearing from the prosecution, which requested a four month prison term to be followed by five years supervised probation, judge Bruce Guyton sentenced Jean to time served and ordered to pay a fine of $500 (along with a “special fee” of $25).
The prosecution sought to twist Jean’s absence into some kind of defiance of the court: “She shows her remorse and lack of contrition by her absence,” and asserted that her actions at Y12 put the safety of many people at risk as well as threatened our national security. The prosecutor berated Jean for traveling to Europe while awaiting trial but then being unable to attend court for her sentencing. Finally, she derided Jean’s “presumptuous” attempt to “create her own sentence,” by going to jail for a month. The government asked the judge to sentence Jean to four months in prison and five years’ supervised release.
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After 27 years in federal prison for her anti-nuclear witness (and subsequent actions), Helen Woodson arrives in Kansas City on September 10, 2011.
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Reprinted from the Catholic Agitator, newsletter of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker. Steve Baggarly will be sentenced September 20 in federal court in Knoxville, Tennessee, for trespass July 5, 2010 at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Last night as I prepared to turn in, at the foot of my upper bunk, a young Aryan Nation member began to pummel my neighbor’s face. All I could do was lean over the edge of my bunk, shout, “Hey, hey, hey!” and stick my hand between them momentarily as David punched Everett on past my bunk towards the next. Somehow the guards burst in and, yelling, stopped the beating almost as quickly as it began. It seems Everett had just been outed as a pimp of under-aged girls and David, who was abused as a child, fashioned himself an avenging angel.
The blood splattered on the floor around my bunk reminded me how easily dismissed is Jesus’ nonviolent way in favor of the seeming efficacy of violence. A deeply held faith in violence as necessity pervades not only jail culture, but the nation as well. Indeed, the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is an icon of our national commitment to use brute force – heat, blast and radiation – against human flesh. Part of the World War II Manhattan Project, Oak Ridge enriched the uranium used in the first atomic bomb, dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, August 6, 1945.
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Silo Pruning Hook activist Helen Woodson is due to be released September 9 after serving nearly 27 years in prison for that and subsequent actions against war and other assaults on human dignity, peace and the environment.
July 23, 2011
Dear Jack & Felice,
48 days – and then I’ll emerge, Winkle-esque, into a very different world. I’ve always been a troglodyte and came to prison never having laid eyes on a TV remote control. Now the federal prisons have e-mail! I am not permitted to use it, but I did have to acquire rudimentary computer skills to access my address list and commissary account.
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Norman Lowry, jailed twice in recent years for protest at a military recruiting office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was released Monday, June 27, after serving nearly 18 months for trespass and probation violation after his second arrest.
A few weeks later, Lowry wrote, “After searching God’s heart & being freed from the spiritual sludge of my last incarceration, I am convinced of God’s leading to simply stay the course & continue to say my simple & small ‘NO’.” He returned to the recruiting office on August 1 with the following statement, and remained there until police were summoned and he was again arrested.
Lowry intended to refuse to post bond, and expects to remain in jail until trial.
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Korean peace activist Sung-Hee Choi was released from Jeju Island prison today, August 17, where she’d been held since May 19 on multiple charges of obstructing the business of naval base construction contractors. After a series of court hearings through the summer, Choi was convicted and sentenced to eight months in jail. A two-year stay on execution of the sentence was granted, effectively placing Choi on probation for that period.
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Retired Navy Captain Tom Rogers, in custody after blocking entrance to the Trident nuclear submarine base in Washington state. Photo by Leonard Eiger.
Among the hundreds of meetings, church services, vigils, teach-ins and demonstrations across the world marking the 66th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, people engaged in acts of nuclear resistance were arrested at at least half a dozen places, including the world’s largest nuclear weapons profiteer, a nuclear weapons lab, nuclear military bases, and the Pentagon.
LOCKHEED/MARTIN
The Brandywine Peace Community and friends returned to Lockheed-Martin’s sprawling facility behind the King of Prussia Mall, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The peace activists participated in a ceremony created for the occasion: Memory, Hope, & Peace – Incense, Water, and Sunflower Seeds.
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