Monthly Archive for March, 2024

from Ariel Gold, Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA Executive Director

Yesterday, Susan, Rev. Fahed Abuakel, I, and others finished walking 20 miles (about the length of Gaza) from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to Lockheed Martin. Gathered with families and children too young to yet comprehend the horrors of war, twenty-five of us crossed onto the property of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world. 

Some lay down holding a list of the over 13,000 children who have been killed since October 7, 2023. Others held a banner reading, “Lockheed Martin, you have blood on your hands.” I was the first to be taken into police custody.

Sylver Pondolfino

from Nevada Desert Experience

On the morning of March 27, during an anti-drone protest, 89-year-old retired pastor George Killingsworth of Berkeley, California was arrested for drawing a peace sign with chalk on a large boulder near the gate of Creech Air Force Base in Indian Springs, Nevada. He was charged with defacing public property and released outside the base. 

Karen Pettit of Las Vegas, Nevada and Sylver Pondolfino of Staten Island, New York were also arrested while blocking traffic at the drone base. They were taken to the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas, charged with failure to disperse and later released. Prior to their arrests, a driver wearing a USAF flight suit lurched forward with her vehicle and made contact with Karen. No injuries resulted.

Jim Haber (photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa)

by Felice Cohen-Joppa

Members of the Pacific Life Community converged outside of Las Vegas from March 16 – 18 for their annual gathering to protest nuclear weapons. Two of them were arrested on Monday morning, March 18 during a nonviolent action at the Nevada nuclear test site.  

Before Rush Rehm and Jim Haber crossed the line onto the site, 40 people gathered for a ceremony in the desert outside of the boundary fence of the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS). They placed a plaque honoring the life of Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM under a creosote bush. Vitale was a co-founder of the Nevada Desert Experience in the early 1980s, who often protested and was arrested at the Nevada test site over the years. The activists then joined hands in a circle to take part in the Elm Dance, which “celebrates commitment to life and solidarity with activists the world over”.

Daniel Hale (Photo posted on Twitter by the Daniel Hale Support Network.)

Daniel Hale’s case was part of a continuation of the U.S. government’s war on whistleblowers under President Joe Biden

Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale was released from prison in February after spending 33 months in some of the harshest confinement conditions ever imposed on a person for disclosing classified information to the press.

Hale remains in federal custody but is living in home confinement until July.