Monthly Archive for December, 2010

If I had a Jackhammer

Posted on December 31, 2010

Photo by Frank Di Piazza/St. Louis Magazine

Father Carl Kabat has spent nearly 17 years in
jail for civil disobedience. His most common accessory with handcuffs?

By Stefene Russell

http://www.stlmag.com/St-Louis-Magazine/December-2010/If-I-Had-a-Jackhammer/

A Howard Johnson’s parking lot. The sky’s still dark and full of stars. Eight people stand together: Two priests and a former priest, a nun,
a divinity student, a musician, a lawyer, and a housewife. They’re 45 minutes early. Later, the housewife will note she felt perfectly calm, while the lawyer was “deep-breathing like crazy.”

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Chicago grand jury subpoenas anti-war activists

Posted on December 30, 2010

We’re keeping an eye on the case of more than a dozen anti-war and international solidarity activists whose mid-west homes were raided in late September, documents and computers seized, and were subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury about alleged material support for terrorism. A newly expanded and court-endorsed definition now says that even explicitly nonviolent assistance to organizations alleged by the government to support terrorism constitutes material support.

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Summary of the Disarm Now Plowshares Trial. This can not be! Not now! Now What?

Posted on December 22, 2010

by Anabel Dwyer

http://disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/dwyer/

Pray! Mourn! Organize!
“Woo???!!!”
This we still refuse to learn:
Our legal system “protects”
with useless fences
non-existent, classified “property”
belonging to US
“missioned” for genocide
from a Sister, two Fathers and
two Grandmas
who walk with and in love and beauty.

Disarm Now Plowshares and their banner “Trident: Illegal and Immoral” say it all. Stunning whistleblowers:  Sr. Anne Montgomery, 84;  Fr. William Bischel, 81;  Susan S. Crane, 65; Lynne Greenwald, 60 and Fr. Steven Kelly, 60, pointed out, with boundless kindly courage, the grotesque Trident plans and preparations for nuclear extermination
that clearly violate peremptory rules and principles of humanitarian law, U.S war crimes (18 USC 2441) and Genocide (18 USC 1091) statutes and military law.

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No Act of Rebellion is Wasted

Posted on December 21, 2010

by Chris Hedges

We may feel, in the face of the ruthless corporate destruction of our nation, our culture, and our ecosystem, powerless and weak. But we are not. We have a power that terrifies the corporate state. Any act of rebellion, no matter how few people show up or how heavily it is censored by a media that caters to the needs and profits of corporations, chips away at corporate power. Any act of rebellion keeps alive the embers for larger movements that follow us. It passes on another narrative. It will, as the rot of the state consumes itself, attract wider and wider numbers. Perhaps this will not happen in our lifetimes. But if we persist, we will keep this possibility alive. If we do not, it will die.

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~ From Fr. Louis Vitale, written at the Irwin County Detention Center, Georgia

Posted on December 20, 2010

photo by Cindy Callahan

December 8, 2010

HERE WE ARE AGAIN

by Fr. Louis Vitale

Two weeks have passed since David Omondi and I began our sojourn here at Irwin County Detention Center in southern Georgia.  Some may say, “Vitale has protested himself back into the pokey below the Mason-Dixon line” and “He has been jailed again in an effort to bring peace and social justice.”  SF Chronicle 11/28

Many ask, “Why do you keep doing this?”  We try to respond:  “Because the oppression goes on and our nation is a major participant in that oppression of the poor and of all creation.”  Specifically this manifestation of mourning focuses on the School of the Americas (WHINSEC) at Ft. Benning, Georgia, where U.S. military have taught counter-insurgency techniques, including torture and disappearance, to Latin American military.  It still goes on, as recently observed with the outrageous coup in Honduras carried out by graduates of the School of the Americas.  In fact, our involvement in oppressive militarism extends throughout the world!

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E-Bulletin December 2010

Posted on December 18, 2010

The Nuclear Resister E-bulletin, December, 2010 IN THIS E-BULLETIN: 1) VETS FOR PEACE & SUPPORTERS ARRESTED AT WHITE HOUSE, TIMES SQUARE & SAN FRANCISCO DEMAND “END THESE WARS!” 2) FIVE DISARM NOW PLOWSHARES ACTIVISTS FOUND GUILTY 3) TWENTY-EIGHT ARRESTS DURING FT. BENNING PROTEST – Vitale & Omondi began 6 month prison sentences 4) WRITE A […]

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Veterans arrested at White House, Times Square, and San Francisco demand “End These Wars!”

Posted on December 17, 2010

Veterans for Peace and others took a stand against war on Thursday, December 16, in the largest veterans-led civil resistance action to date against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Veterans at the White House, December 16, 2010. Photo by Ellen Davidson.

After a 10 am rally in Lafeyette Park featuring Marine Corps veteran and Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg,  Veterans For Peace National President Mike Ferner and VFP Vice-President and retired Navy Commander Leah Bolger, Iraq vet and March Forward! co-founder Mike Prysner, and others, activists formed a solemn single-file procession to the White House, silent except for a drum beat. There, they encountered police barricades. Some veterans began climbing over the barricades, until the police opened them up, allowing people to approach the fence in front of the White House with their banners and signs.

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Jury reaches verdict in Disarm Now Plowshares trial

Posted on December 13, 2010

Tacoma, Washington, Monday, December 13, 2010: The federal criminal trial of five veteran peace activists that began December 7 ended today after the jury found them guilty on all counts. The five defendants, called the Disarm Now Plowshares, challenged the legality and morality of the US storage and use of thermonuclear missiles by Trident nuclear submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Bremerton Washington.

In their defense the peace activists argued three points: the nuclear missiles at Bangor are weapons of mass destruction; those weapons are both illegal and immoral; and that all citizens have the right and duty to try to stop international war crimes from being committed by these weapons of mass destruction.

The five were charged with trespass, felony damage to federal property, felony injury to property and felony conspiracy to damage property. Each defendant faces possible sentences of up to ten years in prison.

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Disarm Now Plowshares case goes to the jury

Posted on December 11, 2010

Outside the courtroom: Fr. Bill Bichsel, Susan Crane, Fr. Steve Kelly, Sr. Anne Montgomery, and Lynne Greenwald. Photo by Leonard Eiger.

December 10, Tacoma, Washington – The federal criminal trial of five veteran peace activists facing several charges was recessed until Monday, December 13, after their jury announced late Friday they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on one of the counts. The Tacoma Washington trial has been going on since Tuesday. The five defendants, called the Disarm Now Plowshares, challenged the legality and morality of the US storage and use of thermonuclear missiles by Trident nuclear submarines at the Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base outside Bremerton Washington.

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