The Nuclear Resister

Reflection by Sue Frankel-Streit in collaboration with Bill Frankel-Streit

New Year’s Day 2011,

Little Flower Catholic Worker Farm, Virginia, USA

I don’t know what effect hammering on a B-52 bomber actually had on the first Gulf War (other than that particular bomber not bombing). But I know that the effect that action had on me was immense; likely immeasureable. I don’t think about the ANZUS Plowshares action that often. I don’t speak about it unless someone asks. It was 20 years ago, after all. There have been so many creative, risky, beautiful acts of resistance before and since,  that I don’t dwell often on that one.

Still, though, those few solid thwacks of my hammer on that huge plane in the early hours of the New Year 1991, and all the preparation leading up to them, and all the court time and, most especially, all the jail time that followed, have pretty much informed every aspect of my life since.

We’re keeping an eye on the case of more than a dozen anti-war and international solidarity activists whose mid-west homes were raided in late September, documents and computers seized, and were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about alleged material support for terrorism. A newly expanded and court-endorsed definition now says that even explicitly nonviolent assistance to organizations alleged by the government to support terrorism constitutes material support.

by Chris Hedges

We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored by a media that caters to the needs and profits of corporations, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers for larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the rot of the state consumes itself, attract wider and wider numbers. Perhaps this will not happen in our lifetimes. But if we persist, we will keep this possibility alive. If we do not, it will die.

Veterans for Peace and others took a stand against war on Thursday, December 16, in the largest veterans-led civil resistance action to date against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans at the White House, December 16, 2010. Photo by Ellen Davidson.

After a 10 am rally in Lafeyette Park featuring Marine Corps veteran and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg,  Veterans For Peace National President Mike Ferner and VFP Vice-President and retired Navy Commander Leah Bolger, Iraq vet and March Forward! co-founder Mike Prysner, and others, activists formed a solemn single-file procession to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. There, they encountered police barricades. Some veterans began climbing over the barricades, until the police opened them up, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House with their banners and signs.

Outside the courtroom: Fr. Bill Bichsel, Susan Crane, Fr. Steve Kelly, Sr. Anne Montgomery, and Lynne Greenwald. Photo by Leonard Eiger.

December 10, Tacoma, Washington – The federal criminal trial of five veteran peace activists facing several charges was recessed until Monday, December 13, after their jury announced late Friday they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on one of the counts. The Tacoma Washington trial has been going on since Tuesday. The five defendants, called the Disarm Now Plowshares, challenged the legality and morality of the US storage and use of thermonuclear missiles by Trident nuclear submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Bremerton Washington.