Jesuit Father Bill Bichsel, 82, Jesuit Father Stephen Kelly, 61, Sacred Heart Sister Anne Montgomery, 83, Baltimorean Susan Crane, 65, and Lynne Greenwald, 61, entered their pleas Oct. 8 with Magistrate Judge Karen L. Strombom of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. They are charged with conspiracy, trespass, destruction of property on a naval installation and depradation of government property. Strombom set a Dec. 7 trial for the defendants, who call themselves the Disarm Now Plowshares. Each member of the group briefly told Strombom as part of their plea that they wanted to see the end of war, a reversal of the U.S. policy of preparing for nuclear war or a change in federal spending priorities toward an emphasis on education and health care. “My plea was for the children of this country and the world who need education and health care and food and housing, not weapons of mass destruction,” Sister Anne told Catholic News Service Oct. 11. Father Kelly explained that his involvement in the protest was required by his Christian faith. “I said I’m pleading on behalf of the victims of the production and, God forbid, the use of nuclear weapons, of all the victims from Hiroshima, Nagasaki to the uranium mineworkers and the victims of the (federal) budget (priorities),” he told CNS.Greenwald, who is associated with the Tacoma Catholic Worker, called for “the end of all war, especially for the end of the threat of nuclear war.” Crane twice attempted to enter a motion of dismissal of all charges, but Strombom said such a motion was inappropriate at an arraignment. Crane subsequently filed the motion for dismissal with the clerk of courts following the arraignment. The motion cited several U.S. and international laws that describe the use of nuclear weapons as a war crime.
If convicted, the five face prison terms of three to five years and fines of $50,000 to $250,000 on each charge. Strombom told the protesters that the court could sentence them to consecutive sentences if they are convicted of multiple charges.The five were indicted Sept. 3 by a federal grand jury 10 months after the protest. They are accused of using bolt cutters to cut holes in three chain-link fences to enter the Naval Base Kitsap’s Bangor complex, 20 miles west of Seattle.
The base is the West Coast home of the Trident nuclear-armed submarine and Strategic Weapons Facility, Pacific, where more than 2,300 nuclear warheads are stored. Once inside, the five left a trail of blood, hammered on a roadway and fences, scattered sunflower seeds and unfurled a banner that read: “Disarm Now Plowshares, Trident: Illegal + Immoral.”
The government said the five posed a danger to national security. All five have been arrested, charged and jailed for their involvement in nonviolent protests at weapons facilities in the past.
Link (here) to the Catholic Review Online.
3 comments:
Give them all three (or however many separate charges there are) consecutive five-year sentences so they'll die in prison and be prevented from doing such shenanigans again. They've engaged in this peacenik nonsense before and they're determined to do it again. They're crusaders in their own minds, and the only reason they have the opportunity to pull such selfish, adolescent stunts is because America's military and ideals provide them with a safe and free society in which to live. Let's have them protest or destroy military equipment in Iran and see how they're treated by that government.
I'm not sure how "peace" became equated to religious values -- in the same way that I'm not sure how "democracy" became equated to religious values.
If we remove judgment from "truths" we end up at places like this. And if we can't understand that more is expected of us - the perfection of the immaterial, often at the expense of the material - then we keep ourselves distant from God. And that is an immense price to pay.
Blessed are the peacemakers. . .
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