Author Archive for jack

Photo by David Solnit

Click here for the latest update, “10,000 arrests demand CEASEFIRE NOW!”

From the Nuclear Resister

(This chronicle of resistance is published in issues #202 and #203/204 of the Nuclear Resister newsletter, and online at nukeresister.org. Last updated on July 11.)

Since October of 2023, thousands of protests and actions around the world have called for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In this day-by-day record of dissent, the Nuclear Resister has chronicled more than 9,000 arrests (and counting) in the U.S. and Canada on over 350 occasions across more than 125 cities and towns in 36 states and 5 provinces. Over 3,400 of these arrests have taken place on at least 70 university campuses. It marks the largest surge of anti-war arrests since mid-April, 2003, when the Nuclear Resister reported over 7,500 anti-war arrests in the U.S. alone in the lead-up to and first weeks of the second U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Susan van der Hijden, Susan Crane and Gerd Büntzly at Rohrbach prison on June 4 (Peace Walk Büchel 2024 photo)

JULY 30 UPDATE: Susan Crane and Susan van der Hijden are now serving their time at an open (lower security) prison in Koblenz. You can write to them individually at JVA Koblenz – Offener Vollzug, Simmerner Str. 14a, 56075 Koblenz, Germany.

You can read their prison reflections here and here.

from Nukewatch

On Tuesday, June 4, the first ever female U.S. peace activist sentenced to prison in Germany in the 25-year-long campaign demanding the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force base, began her sentence of 229 days, the longest ever imposed in the campaign.

Susan Crane, 80, from Redwood City, California, along with Dutch citizen Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam, both began serving “substitute” sentences Tuesday  — for nonpayment of financial penalties — at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison in Rhineland-Palatinate. Susan van der Hijden was given a 115 day sentence, resulting from Büchel actions in 2018 and 2019.

Crane was convicted September 20, 2021 in Koblenz Regional Court in Germany on six counts of trespass stemming from repeated protests against the nuclear weapons “forward deployed” by the United States at Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne.