Photo by Mark Coplan
Early in the morning on Good Friday, April 14, more than 100 peace activists gathered at Livermore nuclear weapons Lab in California. They walked in a Stations of the Cross procession to the Lab’s west gate. Twenty-nine participants of various ages and faith traditions were arrested after crossing onto Lab property. They were given a court date of May 15 to appear in county court in Fremont.
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Nevada nuclear test site, Photo by Wendy Doetkott Rogan
from the Nevada Desert Experience
The Nevada Desert Experience held its 23rd annual Sacred Peace Walk (SPW), which happens every year during Holy Week. On Saturday, April 8, the SPW began at the Atomic Testing Museum, and continued through the Las Vegas Strip and Fremont Street. The Maundy Thursday finale for the interfaith group on April 13 was a foot washing ceremony at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), followed by a prayer-action at the white line on the public road leading into the nuclear test site. Sixteen people were arrested by Nye County sheriffs. The NNSS continues to receive shipments of so-called low-level nuclear waste. Since the site is on Western Shoshone land, the prayer-activists carried Shoshone permits granting them the right to be present at the NNSS.
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Photo by Ellen Grady
Nine peace activists were arrested on April 14 during a Good Friday witness against drone warfare at Hancock Air Base in New York. While blocking the entrance into the base, some of them stood with arms outstretched against replicas of cross-shaped drones, while others held cut-outs of drones topped with signs, some of which read “Drones Crucify Love”, “Drones Crucify Families”, “Drones Crucify Due Process”, “Drones Crucify Diplomacy” and “Drones Crucify Peace”.
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from the Aegis 9
Nine activists were arrested during a snow storm on Saturday morning, April 1 at Bath Iron Works (BIW) in Maine during a “christening” of a destroyer outfitted with so-called “missile defense” systems.
The group blocked the ceremony entry gate and were charged with trespass on BIW property – which ironically is ultimately paid for by taxpayer $$$. BIW is owned by General Dynamics.
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Photo by Clancy Dunigan
from Truthout
March 28, 2017
by Allison McGillivray
It was March 7, and I wasn’t expecting the snow. I tucked my fingers into my sleeves, wishing I hadn’t left my gloves in California. I had traveled to the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor to demonstrate at the site of the largest stockpile of deployed nuclear weapons in the United States, likely the world. With a dozen protesters, I occupied lanes of traffic. Down this road, past the gate on Trigger Avenue, on the Hood Canal just 20 miles from Seattle, sits a deadly fleet of nuclear submarines. Each vessel has the capacity for 24 Trident II D5 missiles, eight warheads apiece, with a 4,000-mile target radius. The US has 14 Trident submarines, eight to 10 of which are at sea at any given time.
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Photo by Fumi Tosu
The Pacific Life Community returned to Washington state for their annual gathering, concluding with a blockade of the main gate into the Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor. The base is the Pacific homeport of the Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet.
A two-day program at a nearby retreat center built on the legacy of now-retired Raymond Hunthausen. As Archbishop of Seattle in 1984, he declared that “Trident is the Auschwitz of Puget Sound.” Hunthausen’s wages were garnished when he publicly refused to pay the war tax percentage in protest.
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Brisbane-area Catholic Workers and friends visited the Australian city’s historic Toowong Cemetery on Ash Wednesday afternoon, March 1. At the gate stands a large stone crucifix, adorned by a metal sword that marks it as a war memorial.
“From the moment I saw that sword on the cross… I knew I could not not remove it,” said Jim Dowling. From a ladder leaned on the crosspiece, he used a crowbar to remove the sword. He handed it down to Tim Webb, who placed the sword on an anvil and reshaped it into a garden hoe, echoing the Biblical prophecies of Micah and Isaiah that, “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.”
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Photo by Jessica Stewart
from Upstate Drone Action
Four drone resisters who had been arrested in 2015 at Hancock drone base – James Ricks, Daniel Burns, Brian Hynes and Ed Kinane – were found innocent of all charges at 11 p.m. at the Dewitt Town Court in New York. After deliberating for only about a half hour, the jury returned with a verdict of not guilty on all charges. Applause erupted in the courtroom upon the jurors’ announcement of the verdict. The four were charged with obstruction of government administration, disorderly conduct and trespass, and faced a year in jail. Following the rendering of the verdict, a juror approached Brian Hynes and said, “I really support what you are doing. Keep doing it.”
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from Occupy Beale Air Force Base
Anti-drone activists blocked traffic at the Main Gate into Beale Air Force Base for over 30 minutes on February 28 during early morning commute hour.
Flora Rogers, Mike Rufo, Pamela Osgood and Toby Blomé were later arrested for trespassing as they entered the base. One was trying to deliver a group letter to the base commander, expressing opposition to the unlawful drone assassination program (see letter below).
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from Campaign Against Arms Trade, caat.org.uk
Early on the morning of January 29, Reverend Dan Woodhouse, a Methodist minister in Leeds, and Quaker activist Sam Walton entered BAE Systems’ Warton site in order to disarm warplanes bound for Saudi Arabia. Both have been arrested and are being held “on suspicion of criminal damage” in Blackpool.
Their actions are aimed at preventing BAE’s delivery of fighter jets to the Saudi government. The planes were due to be shipped from the base in the next few weeks. A Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out devastating airstrikes in Yemen since 2015, and international human rights organisations have condemned the bombings, with widespread allegations of war crimes.
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