You Do the Crime – You Do the Time
Some folks spend their retirement years in Arizona playing golf. Some prefer lolling on thebeach in sunny California. Not sister Anne Montgomery, 83. She is serving 2 months in federalprison and 4 months in electronic home confinement. Father Bill Bichsel, 81 a Jesuitpriest, has joined her for 3 months plus 5 months in electronic home confinement. Susan Crane 67, of Baltimore’s Jonah House is in jail for 15 months. The youngsters, both 60,Nurse Lynn Greenwald, is serving 6 months and Jesuit priest Father Steve Kelly are behindbars for 15 months. They had to come up with $5,300 each.
These “Feisty five” are membersof Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a group that has been resisting Trident nuclear weapons since 1977.It was All Souls night, November 2, 2009. It was dark when they cut through a hefty chain link fence and stealthed their way into the Navy Base outside of Tacoma, WA. They knew hundreds of nuclear warheads were there, waiting to arm eight Trident submarines. They walked almost four miles before they came to the missile storage bunkers.
These elderly activists later explained their opposition to these sleeping nuclear missiles: it seems a fully loaded Trident submarine carries 192 warheads, and each warhead is 30 times more destructive than the weapon dropped on Hiroshima.
Back to the bunkers. They were surrounded by another formidable fence. There was a sign with a skull and crossbones, very appropriate for this particular night. Once again, the wire cutters did their job. When gathered inside the second fence, the senior citizens unveiledtheir sign “DISARM NOW PLOWSHARES” and waited quietly, prayerfully, for their arrest come daylight.
At the trial, the defendants were not allowed to present the deathly consequences of nuclearweapons, other information relating to their actions, nor the fact that in other international cases nonviolent protesters were acquitted. Anyhow, it’s water under the bridge over troubled waters. Or, maybe it’s Maxine turned pacifist; or, simply following in the path of Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr.
Information on the above story gathered from the Salem-News. For more on this story and
information about the defendants, go to disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com.
Submitted by Nancy Leys, Albright Peace Advocate
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