The Nuclear Resister

Nonviolent resistance to this (Australian) winter’s fourth annual Talisman Sabre war games in Queensland was anchored at a community center in Rockhampton, where a few activists have been publicly promoting the protests for months.  Notably, Bryan Law regularly spoke out on the town mall, declaring his intention to disarm a helicopter during the military exercises.  Police arrested him for speaking out, only to be chastened by the judge who declared the case a matter of free speech, but nevertheless continued the case.

But then another offense was alleged, and Law was cited July 8 with threatening an aircraft, a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison. He was released with an order to stay away from the military base – an order breached two weeks later when Law kept his promise [see ploughshares story].

Kansas City Plant construction site

CRANE PRUNING HOOK

Fr. Carl Kabat entered the construction site of the new nuclear bomb factory in Kansas City, Missouri at approximately 10:00 p.m. on July 3.  At dawn on July 4 he had broken the cab windows of a couple of large pieces of construction equipment present there, and hung a small hand-made sign declaring “Nuclear Weapons are a Crime Against God and Humanity”.  After looking about the empty construction site for someone to “make confession to,” Kabat crawled under a fence near the gate and approached a security shack outside the gate.  Guards noticed him and Kabat was taken into custody and police were summoned to the site.  Kabat was arrested and taken to the downtown Kansas City, Missouri jail.  He was charged with trespass and released at 4 a.m. on July 5, then took a bus home to St. Louis.  He is due in court again August 16.  Carl’s statement is below.

I, Fr. Carl Kabat, omi, have been pondering an appropriate way to celebrate the fourth of July, commonly called Independence Day. Today it would be more appropriate to call it Interdependence Day since all of us live on this small planet Earth. To show my patriotism and love for my country and the good of my country, I have decided on a pruning hook action in Kansas City, Missouri.

Photo by Cindy Stahler. At the police station after their release pending a July 19 court appearance in Brattleboro’s Windham County Court.

Fifteen women, the largest ever contingent of the Shut It Down Affinity Group to date, were arrested Thursday afternoon, June 30, at the Entergy Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant.  The women were charged with trespass after advocating for replacing nuclear power with solar power.

Shut-It-Downers included three women in their nineties: Valerie Mullen, 90, of Vershire, Vermont; Frances Crowe, 92, of Northampton, Massachusetts, and Lea Wood, 94, of Montpelier, Vermont.

Press Release from Witness Against Torture

June 23, 2011, Washington, DC –

While the U.S. House of Representatives chamber filled for a vote today at 4:40pm, Representatives’ eyes and ears turned toward the Chamber’s gallery as a group of activists interrupted proceedings to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison and denounce provisions in the Defense Appropriations Bill concerning detention policy.

Fifteen people from the group Witness Against Torture stood in the gallery to read the following statement:

“Today the House of Representative is in the process of contemplating not the passage of a bill but the commission of a crime. Provisions in the proposed Defense Appropriations Bill grant the United States powers over the lives of detained men fitting of a totalitarian state that uses the law itself as an instrument of tyranny. The law would make the prison at Guantanamo permanent by denying funds for the transfer of men to the United States, even for prosecution in civilian courts.

The LANL Fathers Day Five, ready for a prayer-action.

At the conclusion of a 24-hour prayer vigil outside the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), five peaceful demonstrators were arrested on June 20 outside the construction site of the new Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement (CMRR) facility, a critical part of new U.S. nuclear weapons production.
Trinity Nuclear Abolition (TNA) held the vigil with members of Veterans for Peace, Pax Christi New Mexico, Pax Christi Holy Family, Trinity House Catholic Worker, and Citizens for Alternatives to Radioactive Dumping in honor of Fathers’ Day and Holy Trinity Sunday.