Longtime Anti-Nuclear Activists Face Prison, Again, After Breaking Into Naval Base

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.npr.org/2020/12/28/948116757/longtime-anti-nuclear-activists-
face-prison-again-after-breaking-into-naval-base

Dressed in black, the seven intruders cut through a fence and stole along
the perimeter of the naval base, trying to avoid detection from the guard
towers, as a loudspeaker overhead blared: "Deadly force is authorized!"

Patrick O'Neill, who had a GoPro strapped to his head, tried to reassure
himself by remembering a scene in the Bible where Jesus escapes unscathed
from a wrathful mob that wants to throw him off a cliff.

When O'Neill and the others reached their target, they poured their own
blood on the shield of the Kings Bay naval base in Georgia and attached a
poster of Martin Luther King Jr. to a mock-up of a Trident II D5 ballistic
missile at the welcome area.

The anti-nuclear activists — Roman Catholics who call themselves
Plowshares, from the Biblical passage about "beating swords into
plowshares" — followed the metaphor quite literally and took a hammer to
the replica of the warhead.

"When you think of idolatry, that's exactly what I think of: statues of
nuclear weapons," O'Neill said later. "I mean, my God, you're gonna build
a statue for something that if it's used would blow up a whole city full
of people. This is your idea of welcoming people? I mean, it's sick."

The break-in on the night of April 4, 2018, ended with the arrest and
conviction on charges of trespassing and destruction of property for the
seven activists aged 58 to 81.

And in the midst of a pandemic that's wreaking havoc on prisons and
disproportionately affecting older people, six of them have been sentenced
to up to 33 months in prison. The seventh is scheduled to be sentenced in
February.

The Plowshares activists were seeking to revive the anti-nuclear movement
by committing acts of civil disobedience.

They are part of a larger faith-based movement that has been around since
the 1980s, when anti-nuclear protests used to draw millions into the
streets.

Those days are long gone, but the threat of nuclear warfare isn't.
According to some atomic scientists, the threat may be even greater now,
and the activists are frustrated that in their view hardly anyone is
paying attention.

Which is one reason why they have broken into military bases and sometimes
succeeded in doing damage to actual nuclear armaments. In a highly
publicized protest in 1980, Plowshares activists hammered two missile nose
cones at a General Electric complex in King of Prussia, Pa., causing tens
of thousands of dollars worth of damage. In 2012, another group that
included an 82-year-old Catholic nun defaced a bunker holding weapons-
grade uranium at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

"People are always astounded that a bunch of old people or unarmed people
or whatever people can gain access to these weapons at all," said O'Neill,
64.

Martha Hennessey, 65, had already been to prison three times before
beginning her sentence at a federal prison in Danbury, Conn., on Dec. 14.
She is the granddaughter of the journalist-turned-activist Dorothy Day,
who founded the pacifist Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s.

Rather than dwell on her own sentence, she drew attention to the mass
incarceration of people who have committed minor offenses.

"I mean, there are people being thrown into prison for years for, you
know, things that are not even crimes," she said in an interview before
reporting to prison.

Members of the Plowshares group prefer not to talk about the risks they
might face in prison, but their families are worried.

"I'm afraid that my dad might die in prison," said Maura O'Neill, 26, one
of O'Neill's eight children. "I worry that he might contract COVID and get
really sick, and it feels like a real possibility."



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