The Nuclear Resister

© Denis Meyer / Greenpeace

A cargo ship coming from Russia is blocked

from Greenpeace

March 2, 2026

This morning in the port of Dunkirk, around twenty Greenpeace activists blocked the arrival of the cargo ship Mikhail Dudin from Saint Petersburg to protest the nuclear trade between Russia and France. For two years, France has presented itself as a staunch supporter of Ukraine against the Russian aggressor. Yet, behind the scenes, the French nuclear industry (EDF, Framatome, and Orano) continues to do business with Rosatom, the Russian nuclear company complicit in war crimes.

April 28, 2026 update: Grzegorz Gaweł was released from prison and returned to Poland.

A 27-year-old Polish Carmelite monk now sits in a Belarusian prison, facing a possible death sentence on suspicion of espionage after reportedly being found with a photocopy of a classified document related to the “Zapad-2025” war games involving the Russian nuclear weapons now stationed in Belarus. 

On September 4, 2025, when Grzegorz Gawel was visiting the town of Lepel, north of Minsk, officers of the Belarusian State Security Committee (KGB) followed the monk into a town park and took video as he met an unidentified Belarusian man who handed him a sheaf of papers. Video of Gawel’s arrest minutes later was soon broadcast on state television to support the charge that he sought the sensitive papers on behalf of Polish state intelligence agencies. It was alleged he had “contacted a Belarusian citizen via social media and offered to cooperate with the Polish special services.”

Two nuclear resisters represented themselves at a September 2 bench trial before Judge Robert Forman in Pima County Consolidated Justice Court.

John Heid and Elizabeth Murray had been arrested during a prayerful nonviolent resistance action on Ash Wednesday, March 5 at the Raytheon weapons factory in Tucson, Arizona. Together with members of the Pacific Life Community, they gathered outside of Raytheon that day for a prayer vigil to protest the development and production of a new nuclear missile at the plant. They both were charged with misdemeanor trespass after continuing their prayers onto Raytheon’s property.

Solemn and Powerful Gathering at the Livermore Lab Gates on the 80th Anniversary of the US Bombing of Hiroshima

by Marylia Kelley and Scott Yundt 

Around 100 people gathered at the Westgate entrance to Livermore Lab on the morning of Tuesday, August 6, 2025 to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

The theme of the event was, 80 Years of Nuclear Devastation: Remember our History, Reshape Our Future.

The following is an adaptation of a presentation given by Jack Cohen-Joppa at the Pacific Life Community retreat held in St. David, Arizona in March 2025 (published in the August 2025 issue of the Catholic Agitator, newsletter of the Los Angeles Catholic Worker). 

THE WAR IN OUR BACKYARD

by Jack Cohen-Joppa

On the ancestral lands of the Western Apache and O’odham peoples, the United States is peddling war and death. 

In fact, more than sunshine, saguaros and scenic vistas, more than copper, cattle, cotton, and citrus, the largest dollar-value export of things made in Tucson — and in fact in all of Arizona — is war and carnage. Most of that is weapons that come direct from Raytheon’s Tucson plants.

Here in southern Arizona, we have all been sold on and suckered into war. For more than four decades, this region has suckled on the profits of war, and it sucks.