Monthly Archive for May, 2011

From Common Dreams

by Bill Quigley

Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the U.S.   Research shows over 670 people have been arrested in protests inside the U.S. already in 2011, over 1290 were arrested in 2010, and 665 arrested in 2009.   These figures are certainly underestimate the number actually arrested as arrests in U.S. protests are rarely covered by the mainstream media outlets which focus so intently on arrests of protestors in other countries.    

Photo by John P. Kernodle

Or, Day Two of the Y12 Resisters’ Trial

by Ralph Hutchison

On March 4, 2011, Judge Bruce Guyton heard arguments about the government’s motion to limit the testimony that Y12 resisters could give at their trial for crossing the line at the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. On April 29, he issued his ruling—granting the government’s motion and precluding defendants from making any arguments related to international law, necessity, nuclear weapons policy, their religious faith, morals or good motives. The government got virtually everything it wanted—the judge had put a gag over the mouths of the defendants.

And then, for reasons that may never be known, the government took the gag off. The first government witness, Ted Sherry, site manager of the Y12 Nuclear Weapons Complex, took the stand and, in a matter of minutes, mentioned deterrence, US nuclear policy, and nonproliferation, opening the door for the defense to talk about these things. By the end of the day Tuesday, the second day of the trial, they still hadn’t managed to shut the door.

Mother's Day blockade at Kitsap-Bangor Naval Base. Photo by Leonard Eiger

Poulsbo, Washington, Saturday, May 7, 2011 – “Disarm, Disarm! The Sword of murder is not the balance of justice” rang out as nuclear resisters symbolically closed the United States’ largest operational nuclear weapons base. Eighty-three people gathered at the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action on Saturday to celebrate Mother’s Day weekend, honoring nurturing women and resisting the Trident nuclear weapons at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Kitsap County, Washington.

Following a reading of Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation, Ground Zero Center peacekeepers entered the roadway to safely block traffic just before seven nuclear resisters symbolically closed the base by crossing the roadway and standing with a long banner that reading “THE EARTH IS OUR MOTHER — TREAT HER WITH RESPECT.”

Photo by Joshua McElwee, Staff Writer for the National Catholic Reporter

[Blog editor’s note: the final arrest tally was 53, not 52 people.]

by Joshua McElwee

National Catholic Reporter

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fifty-two peace activists, most connected to Catholic Worker houses throughout the nation, were arrested here May 2 after blocking the gate to the construction site of what will be the nation’s first nuclear weapons production facility to be built in 33 years.

The acts of civil disobedience came 78 years and one day from the founding of the first Catholic Worker community by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, and were the culmination of a three-day “faith and resistance” retreat hosted by two Catholic Worker communities, which drew some 150 to this city.