The Nuclear Resister networks the anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance movement while acting as a clearinghouse for information about contemporary nonviolent resistance to war and the nuclear threat. Our emphasis is on support for the women and men jailed for these actions. This website is the online companion to the Nuclear Resister newsletter, a more comprehensive chronicle.
» Read more…
Swedish nonviolence educator and Plowshares activist Per Herngren
by Per Herngren
When civil disobedience spread across Europe and the United States, the biggest mistake was perhaps the fixation on blockades. In the rich part of the world, the blockade has been made the dominant method of civil disobedience. In this text, various reasons are analyzed as to why Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and Mohandas Gandhi did not use blockades.
Gandhi used proactive and performative resistance, and the goal became the means of the struggle, “means and ends are convertible terms”. (Mohandas Gandhi, 1939.) The desired solution to the problem was turned into the method of civil disobedience. When local salt extraction and cotton production were monopolized by the colonial power, Gandhi, together with others, mined salt and spun cotton, breaking the colonial monopoly. This is called performative in queer feminist theory and is similar to Gandhi’s concept of nonviolence, where means and ends are the same. A performative is an action that realizes its vision.
» Read more…
Photo by David Solnit
From the Nuclear Resister
(This chronicle of resistance is published in issues #202 and #203/204 of the Nuclear Resister newsletter, and online at nukeresister.org. Last updated on July 11.)
Since October of 2023, thousands of protests and actions around the world have called for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In this day-by-day record of dissent, the Nuclear Resister has chronicled more than 9,000 arrests (and counting) in the U.S. and Canada on over 350 occasions across more than 125 cities and towns in 36 states and 5 provinces. Over 3,400 of these arrests have taken place on at least 70 university campuses. It marks the largest surge of anti-war arrests since mid-April, 2003, when the Nuclear Resister reported over 7,500 anti-war arrests in the U.S. alone in the lead-up to and first weeks of the second U.S. invasion of Iraq.
» Read more…
Self portrait by Leonard Peltier
From the Leonard Peltier Ad Hoc Committee
» Read more…
Susan van der Hijden, Susan Crane and Gerd Büntzly at Rohrbach prison on June 4 (Peace Walk Büchel 2024 photo)
from Nukewatch
On Tuesday, June 4, the first ever female U.S. peace activist sentenced to prison in Germany in the 25-year-long campaign demanding the withdrawal of the U.S. nuclear weapons stationed at Germany’s Büchel Air Force base, began her sentence of 229 days, the longest ever imposed in the campaign.
Susan Crane, 80, from Redwood City, California, along with Dutch citizen Susan van der Hijden from Amsterdam, both began serving “substitute” sentences Tuesday — for nonpayment of financial penalties — at the Wöllstein-Rohrbach prison in Rhineland-Palatinate. Susan van der Hijden was given a 115 day sentence, resulting from Büchel actions in 2018 and 2019.
Crane was convicted September 20, 2021 in Koblenz Regional Court in Germany on six counts of trespass stemming from repeated protests against the nuclear weapons “forward deployed” by the United States at Büchel, 80 miles southeast of Cologne.
» Read more…
Kernwapensweg – Peace Walk for a Nuclear Free WorldDay 1, 30.05.2024 Fronleichnam/Corpus Christi (bank holiday)
from Christiane Danowski
[Credit for all photos: Peace Walk Büchel 2024]
We started the peace walk with a vigil at the main gate of the NATO air base Büchel where we were greeted by around 30 police as well as soldiers inside and outside the base. Our group of 18 people came together holding banners. Susan van der Hijden, Frits ter Kuile and Margriet Bos successfully glued the posters depicting the Magnificat and a quote from Aaron Bushnell onto the road leading to the main gate of the base. Even though the police knew about Susan‘s “Hafteinladung” (court order, translates as “invitation to detention”) they decided not to take her into custody but instead told her to report right at the prison. Susan (from the Amsterdam Catholic Worker) will now stay with the group and enter prison together with Susan Crane (from the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker) on June 4th, both of them sentenced for past nonviolent actions at Büchel.
» Read more…
Helen Dery Woodson, Presente! » Read more…
April 24 blockade of the West Gate at Holloman Air Force Base
Six activists were arrested while blocking the main gate to Holloman Air Force Base on the morning of April 24 in a protest against the use of killer military drones. Denise Sellers (San Diego, CA), John Reese (High Rolls/Mtn. Park, NM), Natasha Robinson (Berkeley, CA), Toby Blomé (El Cerrito, CA), Virginia Hauflaire (Phoenix, AZ) and Ray Cage (Tucson, AZ) were released that afternoon after being arraigned.
» Read more…
Photo by John LaForge of Jane Stoever & Scot Bohl placing crime scene tape on earth moving machines at H-bomb factory expansion site.
50 resist nuclear bomb production in KC; 10 arrested
by Jane Stoever
With workers streaming into the Kansas City Nuclear Security Campus (NSC)—not a campus but a giant factory making parts for nuclear weapons—50 Catholic Workers and friends took action to try to stop production of nuclear weapon parts at the NSC. And—oh, yes—we protested the building of new structures to make the so-called campus twice its size.
Three persons put “crime scene—do not enter” tape on a huge dump truck on the field the NSC needs flattened for the new building to make new nukes. Workmen told us, “We’re just moving dirt,” an amazing disconnect between their labor and the factory to come that will do mechanical/electronic work for US nuclear bombs.
» Read more…
Beth Blattenberger
from the Nevada Desert Experience
Nuclear weapons abolition and the liberation of the Western Shoshone Homeland were in the hearts and minds of the Sacred Peace Walkers as they concluded their pilgrimage from Las Vegas to the Nevada National Security Site in Mercury, Nevada on Good Friday, March 29. The spirit of Aaron Bushnell and the deadly fires and incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were felt deeply as our souls cried out for a cease fire and an end to the genocide in Palestine along with atonement for the egregious offenses in Ukraine and other parts of the world, past and present.
As the pilgrimage approached the line, Beth Blattenberger, of Salt Lake City, Utah, quietly continued walking across the line and was arrested for trespass.
» Read more…
from Ariel Gold, Fellowship of Reconciliation-USA Executive Director
Yesterday, Susan, Rev. Fahed Abuakel, I, and others finished walking 20 miles (about the length of Gaza) from the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia to Lockheed Martin. Gathered with families and children too young to yet comprehend the horrors of war, twenty-five of us crossed onto the property of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world.
Some lay down holding a list of the over 13,000 children who have been killed since October 7, 2023. Others held a banner reading, “Lockheed Martin, you have blood on your hands.” I was the first to be taken into police custody.
» Read more…