by Felice Cohen-Joppa
On Sunday, October 9, 120 people from 17 U.S. states plus Mexico, Australia, Germany and the Netherlands concluded a Catholic Worker gathering in Las Vegas with protests at the nearby Nevada National Security Site (NNSS, formerly known as the Nevada nuclear test site) and Creech Air Force Base.
A morning liturgy was held in the desert just outside of the main entrance to the nuclear test site. An activist marching band then led the group as they carried signs, banners and colorful butterflies down the road to the gate. Thirty-one of the activists crossed onto NNSS property and were arrested for trespass. They were soon cited and released.
The 1,360 square mile site is where the U.S. tested over 1,000 above-and-below-ground nuclear blasts from 1951 to 1992. It is now used for experiments and safety training related to the nation’s nuclear stockpile. Just three days after the protest, an underground explosion was detonated there to test methods for detecting underground nuclear explosions.
The NNSS is on Western Shoshone Nation land, recognized by the U.S. government in the Treaty of Ruby Valley of 1863. The Western Shoshone National Council has declared their nation a Nuclear Free Zone. They have resisted attempts by the U.S. government to nullify the treaty, and have fought for their land to be returned to them.
The group caravanned a short distance down Highway 95 to Cactus Springs, where they had lunch at the Goddess Temple before continuing on to Creech Air Force Base, a center for U.S. drone warfare operations. They were greeted there by at least 30 state and Las Vegas Metropolitan Police vehicles, and many more officers and deputies. While the marching band played, and supporters held signs nearby, thirteen Catholic Workers from across the U.S. blockaded the main entrance of the base. They held signs reading “Killer Drones: Illegal and Immoral” and others with the names of civilians who have been killed by U.S. drone attacks. They were charged with unlawful assembly and taken to the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas.
The description of the offense written on their citations reads: “If two or more persons assemble for the purpose of disturbing the public peace, or committing any unlawful act, and do not disperse, on being desired or commanded so to do by a judge, justice of the peace, sheriff, coroner, constable or other public officer, the persons so offending are guilty of a misdemeanor.”
Arrestee Brian Terrell said, “Contrary to the allegations of Las Vegas Metro Police, we did not assemble at Creech Air Force Base to disturb the peace or to commit any unlawful act. The purpose of our assembly was to disturb the war and to demand an end to the unlawful act of assassination by drones committed from there by remote control.” (Ammon Hennacy, a Catholic Worker, pacifist, anarchist and Wobbly who came to Las Vegas in 1957 to protest nuclear weapons testing, and died in 1970, once said regarding a similar charge, “I wasn’t disturbing the peace, I was disturbing the war”.)
Terrell, Alexandria Addesso, Kathy Boylan, Kelsey Chalmars, Austin Cook, John Heid, Steve Jacobs, Allison McGillivray, Phil Runkel, Scott Schaeffer-Duffy, Claire Shaeffer-Duffy and Sam Yergler were released from jail 5-7 hours later. Marcus Collonge refused to sign the citation and was released the following afternoon.
Allison McGillivray reflected after her time in jail, “My act of resistance, as insignificant as it might be, was an attempt to put my body in the way of unchecked complicity with drone warfare. This imperial force is not only illegal and unjustified, it is a stain on the precious American ideals of freedom and liberty. I was lucky enough to stand in the name of peace with new and experienced resisters, and to have the opportunity to explain my action to police and prison guards and prisoners alike. Jail is a miserable and ugly and cold place. It is an institution that forces guards and prisoners to be adversaries, a division that seeps into our binary perceptions of good and bad in the world outside. Still, there was tenderness and care between the women in the holding cell, signs that humanity takes more than shackles to be quelled. In the end, this insignificant act brought to me a significant experience. I think Ammon Hennacy said it best, ‘I’m not trying to change the world. I’m trying to stop the world from changing me.'”
Scott Schaeffer-Duffy observed, “The gratuitous cruelty of the guards inside the Las Vegas lock up was as excessive as the glitz on the Strip and the lie that drones are precision weapons. It was wonderful to experience the joy of the Catholic Worker gathering, to witness at the Test Site and Creech Air Force Base, to spend time in solidarity with the poor in lock up, and then, for Claire and me, to enjoy the beauty of Zion National Park. There is more than enough goodness in humanity and beauty in the world to inspire resistance to war and all injustice.”
Hosted by the Las Vegas Catholic Worker, the three-day gathering began with thoughtful sharing at many round table workshops, an inspiring talk by long-time Catholic Workers Willa Bickham and Brendan Walsh of Baltimore’s Viva House, an open mike with performances by musicians, singers, storytellers and poets, and shared meals and prayer.
The Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in New York City in 1933, works to create a “new society within the shell of the old, a society in which it will be easier to be good.” From the Catholic Worker website: “Today 236 Catholic Worker communities remain committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry and forsaken. Catholic Workers continue to protest injustice, war, racism and violence of all forms.”
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from Marcus Collogne (Pegasus), Earth Abides Catholic Worker Farm
JAIL IN VEGAS LEADS TO FARMING IN SIERRA NEVADA
“Who can say, who can know, where my dreams go?” is a line from the Miwok song, a regular part of our song-tradition back home at the Catholic Worker Farm. For a few days, our dreams became reality when Tom Spiritbringer and Pegasus left the Sierra Nevada mountains to see the Nevada Desert with other Catholic Workers from around the nation. Three of the 120 participants came from Australia, Germany and the Netherlands. Although the International gathering was a spiritual family reunion for some, I didn’t get to say goodbye because I was in jail with 12 others for the evening. We 13 were captured via 26 police cars visiting Creech Air Force Base from further away in Las Vegas, NV. Those police knew that 120 Catholic Workers and friends were present, so the police tried to protect the ability of soldiers @ Creech to continue killing scores of innocent folks via drone warfare that afternoon/evening. The street party was at 3:30pm Pacific Time, yet the work of Creech drone crews later that night (around 9:00pm) was destined to be a nightmare for their targeted victims (in daylight elsewhere on this planet) and nightmarish for those of us who were arrested at Creech amidst gaiety (the marching band was lovely).
Grief came later as we (Alex, Kelsey, Kathy, Brian, Claire, Scott, Allison, Sam, Steve, Austin, John & Phil Runkel with me) heard and saw the brutality of the jail system first hand with fellow inmates, mostly swept into the system without warning. Some folks enter the jail through barbaric situations (whether perpetrating violence or victims of such) OUTSIDE jail, but all of us are tossed into the cauldron INSIDE for a host of horrors starting with some humans controlling others, continuing with things like… no treatment or kindness towards mentally disturbed folks, wheel-chair constraints for rambunctious folks, deprivation of sleep for all, not to mention the high-carb grey goo for breakfast. Twelve of us were able to leave before Monday Oct. 10th (a Monday holiday for some in the USA) and I was left inside for another 12 hours. It’s nice to get out to the regular chaos of urbania, but hearts are still broken inside of the jails, and therefore outside as well. Upon release, my friends with NDE took me to supper at an Ethiopian restaurant for succor.
For Indigenous People’s Day, Spiritbringer and I took the long journey back to Earth Abides CW Farm, with hopes that some of the people we encountered at the International CW gathering will join us for stints as volunteers this coming Winter and Spring. We are lucky that many folks in the CW movement are flexible enough to be available to put in some work at our Catholic Worker Farm in the Sierra Nevadas. As we awoke in the morning, ready to make the trip home, others on the northern border of the USA successfully turned off the flow of oil to our over-consumptive nation. I suppose Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin would be pleased over this positive step by ordinary civilians.
And yet, the goodness of nonviolent risk-taking during the Days Prayer and Action is not complete. We all need to do more. We probably need to make FM radio broadcasts to the commuting air force folks so they might get a better chance to hear our message in the comfort of their cars (since their traffic moves to the middle gate as soon as we step into the road at the eastern gate). We probably need to be at all three entrance gates simultaneously to have more conversations with Creech employees. Many lovely peaceful tactics can be deployed to ramp up our efforts for justice in these deserts and peace in the foreign lands as well as our local lands. The audio echo of radio broadcasting is similar to the “bloody-hand heart” we painted in the access road after we left–either one is less-direct than eye-contact during a vigil. At least for the International Catholic Worker gathering of October 2016, the security personnel left the road decorated as we left it on October 9th. It was still very visible on October 11th at 8:30 am.