Joan Staples, Director of the Tahoma Indian Center, blesses the five Disarm Now Plowshares before their arraignment. Photo by Leonard Eiger.
Five nuclear abolitionists who entered the U.S. Navy’s nuclear weapons storage depot in Washington State in November 2009 were arraigned Friday, October 8 in federal court in Tacoma, Washington.
Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, of Redwood City, California; Fr. Bill “Bix” Bichsel, 82, of Tacoma, Washington; Susan Crane, 65, of Baltimore, Maryland; Lynne M. Greenwald, 61, of Tacoma, Washington; and Fr. Steve Kelly, 61, of Oakland, California, were each approved to represent themselves at trial on December 7, 2010. They face up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted on the government’s charges of “conspiracy, trespass, destruction of property on a naval installation, and depredation of government property.” The charges were handed down by a grand jury in early September 2010, ten months after their November 2009 Plowshares action. For more information, visit disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com