Greetings Disarm Now Plowshares Supporters!
In just over one month our dear Disarm Now Plowshares 5 – Anne, Bix,
Lynne, Steve and Susan – will walk into the Union Station Courthouse
in Tacoma once more, this time to face sentencing following their
conviction resulting from their November 2009 Plowshares action.
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Mark Kenney was sentenced to a six month prison term on February 25, for stepping across the line at Offutt Air Force Base. The Nagasaki Day (August 9) demonstration was part of an annual vigil and protest at the home of the U.S. Strategic Command, overseer of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Federal Magistrate Judge Thomas D. Thalken accepted Kenney’s guilty plea, and noted that Kenney’s prior record of line crossing at Offutt resulted in his serving 30 day, 45 day and two six month sentences (the two six months sentences being given by Judge Thalken).
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Georgina Smith
Anti-Trident Woman Released Early from Prison
Eight-one year old Georgina Smith was released yesterday from Cornton Vale Womens Prison ten days early after an anonymous benefactor paid the compensation order she had refused to pay.
Upon release Georgina said “I am fine. I’m not a frail old granny. Anti-nuclear people don’t fade away as soon as they are eighty. They go on resisting these beastly weapons. It was very kind of whoever paid my fine to do so, but what they don’t realize is that when we do these actions we want to take responsibility for them ourselves, even if that means going to prison.”
Georgina served thirteen days of the 45 day sentence for refusing to pay £1,500 compensation
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Sylvia Boyes
Sixty-seven year old Sylvia Boyes, a Quaker from Keighley, appeared today at Bingley Magistrates Court. She was sentenced to 14 days in New Hall Prison for refusing to pay fines arising from a series of protests against Trident in and around Faslane Naval Base in Scotland during the summer of 2009.
Boyes is the third peace activist sentenced to prison in the United Kingdom in two weeks. Eighty-one year old Georgina Smith was jailed a week ago for 45 days for refusal to pay a £3000 compensation order for her part in painting the Scottish High Court, also in protest against Trident. Chris Cole was sentenced January 19 to 30 days for nonpayment of fines from a graffiti protest at a 2009 London arms trade fair. Cole was just released February 2. With statutory credit, Boyes should be released after about one week.
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Western Shoshone lead prayer at the Nevada Test Site. Photo by Jim Haber
Las Vegas, NV, January 29, 2011 — Marking the 60th year since the first atomic bomb was tested on land belonging to the Western Shoshone National Council, near Indian Springs, Nevada, eight activists stepped onto the land and were immediately arrested by Nye County sheriffs.
The Western Shoshone National Council had issued permits for the activists to enter their land. “You bless the land with each of your footsteps,” said Johnnie Bobb, a leader of the Western Shoshone Nation. Taken into custody immediately after stepping onto the land were: George Homanich, Judy Homanich, Mary Lou Anderson, Renee Espeland, Brian Terrell, Denis DuVall, Jim Haber and Jerry Zawada.
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Dear friends,
Over the years we have spent time in prison and/or supported other activists who have been in prison for acts of conscience. We write to you now with a special request on behalf of Helen Woodson.
The Silo Pruning Hooks: Fr. Carl Kabat OMI, Larry Cloud Morgan, Fr. Paul Kabat OMI, and Helen Woodson.
Back in November of 1984, Helen was part of the Silo Pruning Hooks action. She went to a Missouri nuclear missile silo along with Larry Cloud-Morgan, Fr. Carl Kabat OMI and Fr. Paul Kabat OMI. With sledgehammer and jackhammer, the group followed the biblical mandate of Isaiah to turn swords into plowshares. They were convicted and received a varied number of years of prison time for their action.
With the exception of a few days, Helen has been in prison ever since. (A couple of times in past years when released, she immediately engaged in an action that resulted in arrest and being returned directly to prison for violating parole.)
She is scheduled to be released in September of 2011 after 27 years behind bars.
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The Creech 14 (missing: Sr. Megan Rice and Fr. Louis Vitale). Photo by Jim Haber.
Anti-drone protesters vow to continue activism following guilty verdict in Las Vegas courtroom
Las Vegas — On Thursday, January 27, activists charged with trespass, along with their supporters, filled Judge Jansen’s courtroom to hear his verdict regarding their April, 2009 protest at Creech Air Force Base. Crews at Creech control the drones used in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, killing civilians in remote controlled assassination attacks.
In a 20-page written decision, Judge William Jansen found the fourteen guilty of trespass as charged, ruling that their defense did not meet the legal requirement of imminence for acquittal based on necessity.
Before being sentenced, twelve made statements calling for an end to the drone bombings and for nonviolent ways of resolving international conflict. The Creech 14 were arrested during an April 2009 demonstration at Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada, protesting the remote piloting of armed killer drones from Creech in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Graffiti at the High Court, Remembrance Day, 2006
Georgina Smith and Helen John painted “Genocide”, “NO More War Crimes”, “No Upgrade”, “Respect the War Dead”, and “Art, Law, Morality” on the walls outside of the High Court on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile on Remembrance Day 2006. The action was a protest against the High Court’s complicity in the illegal deployment of the genocidal nuclear weapon system by ruling it legal in the Lord Advocates Reference of 2000. In addition their action condemned the Scottish legal system for holding people who blockaded during Faslane365 for up to thirty hours before releasing them without charge.
Georgina is a veteran anti-nuclear campaigner who took part in the decade long women’s encampment at Greenham Common which ultimately ended when US Cruise missiles were removed. The painting was part of the year-long Faslane365 campaign
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Annie Geers is taken into custody. Photo by Melissa K. Elliott
Nearly seventy-five people gathered in front of Lockheed Martin’s Valley Forge, Pennsylvania complex in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania on January 17, the federal holiday observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.
A half block long line of people, holding banners and signs and standing next to large self-standing pictures of Dr. King, chanted “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, heard Jane Dugdale of Main Line Peace Action speak about the military budget, and listened to the extended audio broadcast of excerpts of sermons and speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A bell tolled after a Litany of the King Day Memorial (see below) as eight people, prepared to be arrested in civil disobedience, walked into the crossing of the Lockheed Martin main driveway.
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