Fr Carl Kabat imprisoned Plowshares activist featured in the Sept 6 - NY Times
Frank Cordaro
New York Times
As Battlefields Shift, Old Warrior for Peace Pursues the Same Enemy
By DAN FROSCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/07/us/07activist.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
GREELEY, Colo. — It had been nearly 30 years since the Rev. Carl Kabat
and a group of peace activists, including his fellow Catholic priests
Daniel and Philip Berrigan, barged into a General Electric weapons
plant outside Philadelphia. Known as the Plowshares Eight, they
battered missile nose cones with hammers in an effort to disable some
of the world’s most fearsome weapons, and sprinkled blood on
classified documents to protest the cold war, before they were
arrested.
The cold war ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall 20 years ago this
November and the splintering of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Three of the Plowshares Eight, including Philip Berrigan, have died,
and scores of other activists have turned their attention to the
Arab-Israeli conflict, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the
terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo.
Not Father Kabat, though. At 75 he continues his crusade against
nuclear weapons at missile silos across the United States, armed with
a hammer and a pair of bolt cutters. He usually wears a clown suit, in
homage, he says, to St. Paul’s words: “We are fools for Christ’s
sake.”
Though his actions are mostly symbolic — the authorities have always
seized him before he could damage a live missile — he has spent half
of the last three decades in state and federal prisons.
His most recent protest unfolded on a quiet dawn last month, when he
drove down a country road outside Greeley, a few hours north of
Denver, used the bolt cutters to cut a hole in a chain-link fence,
wedged his aging body through and stepped atop the silo of a Minuteman
III nuclear missile coming up from the ground. He had enough time —
about 45 minutes — to drape antiwar banners from the fence, say a
prayer and try without success to open a hatch leading to the silo
before he was arrested by Air Force security personnel.
“I thought, ‘What a beautiful place this is except for this damnable
thing in the ground that could kill two or three million people,’ ”
Father Kabat said later in an interview at the Weld County Jail, where
he is being held on misdemeanor criminal mischief and trespassing
charges. “It’s insane.”
If convicted, he faces up to a year behind bars, a possibility that
does not seem to faze him.
“You can’t just kill babies and children and old people
indiscriminately,” he said. “It should be unreasonable for every human
person to accept nuclear weapons.”
Bill Sulzman, a former priest from Colorado Springs and a friend,
described Father Kabat’s impact this way: “Everything in the peace
movement has shrunk, but Carl represents steadfastness. When you see a
man of his age willing to take on those risks, it has a big shaming
effect.”
Raised on a farm in southern Illinois, Father Kabat joined the Oblates
of Mary Immaculate order as a young man and became radicalized after
missions in the Philippines and Brazil. But it was not until the late
1970s, after meeting Philip Berrigan — like his brother Daniel a giant
of the peace movement — that Father Kabat hurled himself into the
antinuclear weapons fight.
He served about a year and a half in prison for taking part in the
1980 Plowshares Eight protest at the G.E. plant in King of Prussia,
Pa., which became a touchstone of the antinuclear movement.
Four years later, Father Kabat, his brother Paul and another man and a
woman, armed with a jackhammer, broke into a missile silo in Missouri.
Father Kabat served nearly 10 years in prison for that attack. “Even
if we were left there for 24 hours, we could not cut through the
reinforced concrete,” he recalled, “but we wanted to show that this
was serious business.”
Subsequent protests led to Father Kabat’s spending more time in prison
than out, raising questions about the effectiveness of his approach.
Liz McAlister, who married Philip Berrigan, has an answer. “We live in
a culture where we want to measure everything to know how successful
things are,” Ms. McAlister said. “It’s beautiful to see people who
don’t spend time wondering and worrying about that and are willing to
do what they think is right regardless of the consequences.”
Still, the United States no longer teeters on the brink of nuclear
war, and the 150 Minuteman III missiles scattered across Wyoming,
Nebraska and Colorado go largely unnoticed by a younger generation of
activists.
A 30-year-old Catholic peace activist, Chrissy Kirchhoefer, one of
Father Kabat’s closest friends, acknowledged that she does not
entirely relate to his cause, but said his devoutness still commanded
a profound respect. “For young people, that issue doesn’t really speak
to us,” she said. “But I don’t question the validity or usefulness of
it. Carl once said to me, ‘If I don’t act on this, then what good is
my life?’ ”
To Father Kabat, the nuclear issue — and his protests — remain
essential. The building of weapons continues to drain money that could
be used to fight poverty and hunger, he says, adding, as if caught in
a time warp, “There’s still a real threat these things could go to the
U.S.S.R.”
Nearing his 76th birthday, Father Kabat muses that he now feels freer
behind prison walls, where he spends time reading, reflecting and
playing basketball, a passion, than he does outside them. On the
outside, he says, he is overwhelmed by the sense of not doing enough.
“When I die, I want my tombstone to read, ‘He really lived,’ ” the
priest said with a grin.
On a recent Thursday, Father Kabat shuffled into a small county
courtroom here, shackled to a line of other inmates. He has refused to
post $5,000 bond or sign anything that could be interpreted as
capitulation. Before his case could be presented, Father Kabat’s
public defender and a prosecutor agreed to continue the hearing until
Sept. 17.
The priest smiled, nodded to a small group of supporters in the
courtroom and was taken back to jail.
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Previous posting:
Mail to Fr Carl Kabat must have return address on outside...... How to
send Jail Support $ ....
http://groups.google.com/group/National-CW-E-mail-List/browse_frm/thread/a2cd37807e490776#
Carl's mailing address:
Fr. Carl Kabat OMI
Weld County Jail
2110 O Street
Greeley, CO 80631
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