Good Friday and Easter arrests at the Nevada Test Site, Livermore Labs, Pentagon and 10 Downing Street, London

Posted on April 29, 2011

Easter, 2011 blockade of the Nevada Test Site. Photo courtesy NDE

NEVADA TEST SITE

Easter Sunday Service Ends in 16 Arrests at Nuclear Test Site

At 12 noon on April 24, 2011, 38 people gathered near the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). The group held interfaith prayers and then eight women and eight men were arrested for alleged trespassing onto the NNSS. The prayer-action included local members of the Western Shoshone National Council, Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji monks from Washington state and Catholic Workers from Nevada. Other demonstrators came from Arizona, California, Illinois, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Wisconsin, The Netherlands, and Japan.

The Easter services were the climax of a 60-mile walk from Las Vegas to Mercury along US Highway 95. The annual pilgrimage is the interfaith “Sacred Peace Walk”, which included a musical ritual at the NNSS.

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Persistent anti-nuclear activists in India jailed, shot by police; Tabrez Sohekar is killed

Posted on April 29, 2011

The day after the killing, villagers clash with the police in Ratnagiri. Photo by Deepak Salvi, tehelka.com

Opposition to the proposed six-reactor Jaitapur nuclear power complex at Maharashtra on India’s west coast reached new heights April 18 when police opened fire on more than 100 protesters, killing one – Tabrez Sohekar – and wounding eight others.  The protesters, including many members of Shiv Sena, the opposition political party in Maharashtra state, tried to halt early construction at the site when the conflict turned deadly. Two days before, more than 50,000 people had rallied in opposition.  Sohekar’s family continued the protest, refusing to claim his remains until the Maharashtra government dumps the nuke project.

About fifty local opponents have been jailed in previous weeks, prosecuted for their role in demonstrations last October and December. Some were released April 26, while most remain in custody. Police are regularly tapping organizers’ cell phones to disrupt the organized opposition.

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~ A letter from Bix (written several days before beginning “diesel therapy” to Tennessee)

Posted on April 19, 2011

 

 

photo by Leonard Eiger

After spending the first 2 1/2 weeks of his prison sentence for the Disarm Now Plowshares action at the SeaTac Federal Correction Facility, Jesuit priest Bill “Bix” Bichsel was taken out of his cell on April 18.  He is being transported several thousand miles across the U.S. to Tennessee, where he is scheduled to join 12 others for a May 9 trial stemming from their July 5, 2010 civil resistance action at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge.  (More about the action here.)

Bix’s health is fragile, and being transported by the Bureau of Prisons can make for a long and difficult journey, during which it is difficult to receive needed medications.  Please keep him in your thoughts and prayers.

April 14, 2011
Day 16 at SeaTac Federal Detention

By Bill Bichsel, S.J.

I will pursue my hope to do some writing while in lock-up. I feel the
spirit present with me in lock-up and feel confirmed by the spirit
that here is where I should be.

As I slowly shuffle around the common area, I thank God for being here
and for the peace I experience. I am not anxious or overly concerned
by anything, though I do feel some tugs to answer my letters and to
get my calling and visitor lists into the computer.

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From civil disobedience to civil defiance

Posted on April 18, 2011

by Ed Kinane

“Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is the numbers of people all over the world who have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience…Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves…[and] the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.”
— Howard Zinn

Over the years I’ve been jailed numerous times.  Each such event arose from what is loosely called “civil disobedience.”

The tactical value of arrest and ensuing “court witness” and “prison witness” is that they can generate news helping to bring vital, often neglected, issues to public notice. These mindful acts can boost solidarity and the grassroots campaigns in which they are embedded.

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British activists blockade Queen’s backyard to brand energy giant’s nuclear power bid a “right royal rip-off”; two arrested

Posted on April 11, 2011

Campaigners brought rush hour traffic to a standstill on the morning of April 11 to protest against EDF Energy’s plans to build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the UK. All four lanes of the A302 outside EDF Energy’s headquarters in Grosvenor Place – which runs alongside the gardens of Buckingham Palace – were sealed off shortly after 8 a.m. using 14-foot tripods. The cleared zone was then declared a “nuclear disaster area”.

After seven hours, the police called a specialist team to erect scaffolding to bring down the two activists who were on top of the bamboo tripods.   Once they were down, the pair were arrested and taken to the Belgravia police station.

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27 Human Rights Activists Arrested at the White House Calling for the Closure of the School of the Americas and an End to U.S. Militarization

Posted on April 11, 2011

“Tight Budget?! Close the SOA!” Hundreds March to the White House

On Sunday, April 10, 27 human rights activists were arrested in front of the White House when they staged a die-in on the White House sidewalk to call attention to thousands of Latin Americans who were murdered by graduates of the U.S. Army School of the Americas. The die-in followed a march of hundreds of human rights activists to the White House. The march included torture survivors, union workers, educators and students from across the Americas. Marchers carried banners, flags and large puppets, including a 14-foot tall Mother of the Disappeared, with them to the White House.

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‘Disarmageddon’ peace activists rousted out of the Pentagon

Posted on April 11, 2011

PENTAGON POLICE VIOLENCE AGAINST PEACEFUL PROTESTERS CALLING FOR END TO WAR AND HALT TO DESTRUCTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT

by Joy First

On April 8, 2011 at approximately noon, 25 civilian activists organized by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance arrived at the Pentagon to deliver a letter asking for a meeting with Secretary of War Robert Gates in order to discuss bringing an end to U.S. wars and the destruction of the environment resulting from military policies.
Within less than three minutes, with the activists peacefully requesting that the Secretary’s office receive their letter, Pentagon police officers swarmed the scene, violently moving the activists from the area. 

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Two grandmothers, two priests and a nun go to prison for nuclear weapons protest

Posted on March 28, 2011

By Bill Quigley

Two grandmothers, two priests and a nun were sentenced in federal court in Tacoma, WA Monday March 28, 2011, for confronting hundreds of US nuclear weapons stockpiled for use by the deadly Trident submarines.

Sentenced were: Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York, who was ordered to serve 2 months in federal prison and 4 months electronic home confinement; Fr. Bill Bichsel, 81, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma Washington, ordered to serve 3 months in prison and 6 months electronic home confinement; Susan Crane, 67, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison; Lynne Greenwald, 60, a nurse from Bremerton Washington, ordered to serve 6 months in federal prison; and Fr. Steve Kelly, 60, a Jesuit priest from Oakland California, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison.  They were also ordered to pay $5300 each and serve an additional year in supervised probation.  Bichsel and Greenwald are active members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a community resisting Trident nuclear weapons since 1977.

What did they do?

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Make a Joyful Noise

Posted on March 27, 2011

by Chrissy Nesbitt

It was a joyful group that gathered today at Ground Zero and processed over to the main gate of Bangor Naval Base. We numbered about fifty, all decked out in rain gear and boots and umbrellas, though by the end of the vigil we had the sun come out to join us.

We read together. Steve Kelly read for us the words from Isaiah, about “setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke.” And the world’s liberation, Isaiah tells us, is ours as well: “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your wound shall quickly be healed.”

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Invasion anniversary actions, Manning solidarity action lead to arrests

Posted on March 24, 2011

Veterans at the White House fence, March 19, 2011. Photo copyright Bill Hughes.

Following are reports from Art Laffin of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker community in Washington, D.C., about the veteran-led protest and arrests there on March 19, the eighth anniversary of the U.S. occupation of  Iraq; from Military Families Speak Out about anti-war arrests in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood that same day; and from stopthesewars.org about the following day’s demonstration outside the Marine Corps base at Quantico, Virginia, where alleged whistleblower Pfc. Bradley Manning is being held in solitary confinement.

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