Elizabeth McAlister (photo by Steve Dear)
from the Nuclear Resister
A revered elder of the American anti-war movement was sentenced on Monday, June 8 to time served for her part with six other Catholic peace activists in the April 4, 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares nonviolent direct action for nuclear disarmament. Elizabeth McAlister, age 80, had already spent more than 17 months in Georgia county jails following her arrest.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, McAlister appeared for sentencing via video from her daughter’s home in Connecticut, surrounded by her three children, their partners and her six grandchildren. Judge Lisa Godbey Wood presided from federal court in Brunswick, Georgia.
McAlister was also ordered to pay a special assessment of $310 and restitution of $33,503.51, assigned jointly and severally to all the defendants. Out of consideration for her lifetime of voluntary poverty and lack of material assets, the court did not impose a fine, but mandated a minimum payment of $25/month towards restitution. McAlister was also placed on three years of supervised probation.
McAlister was represented by her attorneys – Bill Quigley, appearing by video from New Orleans, and Jason Clark, also appearing remotely from Brunswick. Her codefendants, their attorneys and more than 250 others phoned in to hear the audio of the proceedings.
In its memo, the defense had objected to several elements of the pre-sentencing report. Judge Wood rejected each objection in turn. She found that in the absence of remorse, the defendant had not accepted responsibility for her actions; that the recommended amount of restitution was appropriate; and most significantly, that the defendants had, at minimum, consciously and carelessly risked their own lives and those of military personnel when they entered the base without regard for no trespassing signs and broadcast audio warnings of deadly force. The judge recalled that one of these warnings was heard in court on a video recording of the action made by one of the defendants. This is the first time the “risk of death” enhancement has been used by the government to increase the recommended sentence for Plowshares defendants.
The same objections have been made to the pre-sentencing reports for the other defendants, and Judge Wood can be expected to reject them in those cases, as well.
Before rendering judgement, the court heard from Frida Berrigan, McAlister’s oldest child, and then from the defendant herself.
Frida Berrigan told the judge and prosecutor “you… know in your hearts and see with your own eyes … that our mother is a good and holy person whose only crime is to attend to the thrum and whisper of her conscience and not allow that still, small voice to be drowned out by the blood-thirsty screams and desperate caterwauling of nuclear preparations and constant war-making. As her daughter, I could wish her hearing was not quite so good…
“As a 46-year-old white citizen in a country where white supremacy and militarized policing are so emboldened that Derek Chauvin can crush George Floyd’s life out of him in front of a crowd, in front of cameras, where the McMichaels father and son can gun down Ahmaud Arbery in broad daylight as he jogged through the streets of a quiet Georgia town, I draw hope and inspiration from white people who continue to invoke Dr. King’s framework of the giant triplets of racism, militarism and materialism… these weights that cripple our collective humanity. I draw hope and inspiration from my mom and her friends who declare that ‘Black Lives Matter’, who wed their anti-nuclear analysis with an anti-racist ethos, and declare that the ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide.
“So, I am here as a daughter who doesn’t want her 80-year-old mother sent back to jail and a human being who wonders how anything ever changes if people like my mom aren’t willing to take that risk.”
(Berrigan’s full statement is below)
Elizabeth McAlister told the court that she had spent much of her adult life speaking and writing against weapons of mass destruction as contrary to life and destructive of life on every level. The action she took to address this crime against humanity and the earth “came out of years of training in the ways Jesus taught us,” and as instructed by the prophet Isaiah, to beat swords into plowshares.
“I’ve tried to faithfully follow the prophecy of Isaiah – learning how to live humanly with other human beings in a humane environment…”
She concluded by saying that it’s because of her children and grandchildren that she feels compelled to act. “I don’t apologize for it. I had to follow my conscience and my faith.”
(McAlister’s full statement is below)
As she pronounced the sentence, Judge Wood reflected her own interpretation of “blind” justice with dispassionate avoidance of the words “nuclear weapons”, while being sure to note that restitution was warranted “to make up for all the things that were ruined there.”
Judge Wood also conceded to McAlister “the firmness of your convictions and strongly held beliefs about which laws are righteous and which laws are not. But if you do choose to break those laws, and a jury of your peers finds so, there are consequences.”
As conditions of her probation, McAlister must cooperate with collection of a DNA sample, may not possess firearms and must provide any financial information requested by the probation office. Her home is also subject to search on reasonable suspicion of any violation of the judge’s orders.
BACKGROUND
On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Kings Bay Plowshares set out late at night to practice their faith and witness for peace among the people working with nuclear weapons inside the U.S. Navy Kings Bay nuclear submarine base on the south Georgia coast. Once inside, they split into three groups to hang banners, pour blood, and spraypaint religious sayings. Grady and Hennessy blocked off an administrative building with crime scene tape, Colville and O’Neill hammered on nuclear missile replicas enshrined at the center of the base and McAlister, Kelly and Trotta breached all but the last fence outside the bunkers where nuclear weapons are stockpiled. All were peacefully apprehended by base security.
Five of McAlister’s co-defendants have already served from seven weeks to fifteen months in jail. Fr. Kelly has been in jail since the action, 26 months and counting. He is not eligible for release because his Georgia arrest violated conditions of his sentence for a 2017 line-crossing at the west coast Trident base at Bangor, Washington. Federal marshals will take him to Washington to appear before the judge there, sometime after he is sentenced in Georgia.
Elizabeth McAlister is the widow of Philip Berrigan. They co-founded the Jonah House community in Baltimore in the mid-1970s, where they raised their three children and for several decades nurtured countless activists to confront nuclear weapons and war.
On September 9, 1980, Philip Berrigan, his brother Fr. Daniel Berrigan, and six other activists – the Plowshares Eight – carried out the first of more than 100 Plowshares nuclear disarmament actions. Plowshares actions are characterized by reference to the biblical prophecy of beating swords into plowshares with their use of hand tools to begin the process of disarming weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. McAlister took part with six others in the 1983 Griffiss Plowshares action, and spent two years in prison.
For more information, visit kingsbayplowshares7.org.
Frida Berrigan
FRIDA BERRIGAN’S STATEMENT TO COURT, JUNE 8, 2020
Thirty-seven years after she first stood before a federal judge to hear the court render a sentence for her nonviolent direct action protesting nuclear weapons, 80-year-old Elizabeth McAlister appeared via video before Judge Lisa Godbey Wood to hear another sentence, maybe the last in the long career of indefatigable hope and courage and unrelenting opposition to nuclear weapons.
Last October, Liz and six others were found guilty of trespass and destruction of federal property, three felonies and a misdemeanor in all, at the Kings Bay Naval Base in St. Marys, Georgia, where they had the audacity, in the middle of the night, to deface a shrine celebrating US nuclear weapons and to protest the preparations for omnicide—the death of everything. Kings Bay is home to nuclear-weapons armed Trident submarines.
The world has changed since activists gathered in October, 2019, for the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares seven in Brunswick, Georgia, to hear testimony and watch video describing their incursion into the naval base, and heard the defendants explain why they chose April 4—the anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination—to carry out their act of faithful obedience. They described hanging banners that read, “The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,” painting messages of peace and spreading blood on the naval base.
In the intervening months, while federal marshals prepared pre-sentencing reports for the Kings Bay 7, the pandemic COVID-19 virus rose up to take more than 400,000 lives—reminding us all, if we have ears to hear, of the peril of complacency in the face of low-probability/high-risk events. It is no exaggeration, and not meant to diminish the suffering of those who have been ravaged by or lost loved ones to the novel coronavirus, to say that a nuclear war would make the current struggles look like a paper cut by comparison.
In quiet, quintessentially southern, all-American Brunswick, Georgia, the spotlight that shone briefly on nuclear weapons during the trial in October shifted abruptly in May when the pandemic of racism re-entered the public’s line of sight and the world learned that Ahmaud Arbery, a young African-American man, was hunted down by three white armed white men—Arbery, out for a morning jog in February, the men in pickup trucks—and was shot and killed. By May, none of the men had been indicted or faced any charges at all. They had, literally, gotten away with murder.
So, instead of a gathering of activists and supporters, complete with a festival of hope and a celebration of community on the night before sentencing, we gathered in spirit, more than 230 people listening on a conference call line. The night before, friends, family and supporters had gathered for a virtual blessing and liturgy via a Facebook event.
On Monday, June 8, Liz was at home in Connecticut; her attorney, Bill Quigley, was in New Orleans. Judge Godbey Wood was in Brunswick. Joining the listeners on the phone were Liz’s six co-defendants (Steve Kelly was able to call in from jail in Brunswick) —they requested in-person sentencings which are currently scheduled for June 29 and 30, dates subject to change depending on the virus activity.
The proceedings went as expected. Following the April 4, 2018, action, Liz spent nearly eighteen months in jail; we expected the judge would not sentence her to additional time in prison. The state sought 3-5 years probation and restitution of just over $30,000.
At 9:15 am, Judge Wood called the court to order. Greg Gilluly spoke for the United States and Bill Quigley for the defense. Judge Wood first talked with Liz about the remote arrangements; she was interrupted by static as her voice bounced back from the speakers in Connecticut.
“Because of the virus it is not safe for all of us to be together in the court. We have given defendants the opportunity to proceed by way of video conference. Entirely their option. You have the right to be here in person. You can wait until it is safe to be here in person. Do you understand, Ms. McAlister?”
LIZ MCALISTER’S STATEMENT TO COURT, JUNE 8, 2020
I have spent much of my adult life trying to speak out about the threat to life, all life on earth, that comes from our weapons of mass destruction and our national policies to try to build more and more deadly and destructive weapons and to invest untold dollars and the lives of people in making these. I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to address this and to say that money doesn’t belong there; that money belongs in building life and a more humane society.
I try to follow the instructions of the prophet Isaiah who told us to turns swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, who spoke of nations not learning war, learning how to live humanly with other human beings in a humane environment. It often seems like a foolish thing to do, but we try to do it anyhow.
I try to follow prophet Isaiah: Stop learning war, stop teaching war, something we teach very strongly in this country. All my life I have spoken and written against nuclear weapons and I believe these are contrary to life, destructive of life on every single level. The action I took at King’s Bay came out of years of my training in the scriptures where we are instructed to beat swords into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks and not to learn war—but war: that’s what we teach, that’s what we teach.
So, too, the actions I took at King’s Bay were taken out of years of training and the faith that Jesus taught us to address crimes against humanity, crimes against life, crimes against the earth. That’s what we are trying to do.
Being arrested, gong to jail for 17 months kept me away from the young people—(Liz names family members)—all here, all wonderful human beings, a blessing. It kept me away from my grandchildren. That’s no fun. But it’s because of these children and grandchildren that I felt compelled to act, and I don’t apologize for it. I feel the weapons are completely destructive of life and the values we are supposed to be placing on these lives.
I acted because I had to follow my conscience and my faith. It was hard on me, hard on the children, grandchildren, and somehow we have come through to this moment. And that’s where we are.
Today 80 year-old Elizabeth McAlister was sentenced to time served and three years supervised probation and restitution for her part in the Kings Bay Plowshares disarmament action more than two years ago at the Trident submarine base in Georgia. US District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood in Brunswick sentenced her by video conference after she waived her right to have an in-person sentencing. Liz had already served more than 17 months in pretrial confinement. She had been convicted of three felonies and a misdemeanor along with her six co-defendants after a trial in October, 2019.
McAlister, widow of Phil Berrigan, was ordered to pay $25 a month towards the restitution for damage to the base, limited because she has no financial assets. The seven plowshares defendants are held to be jointly and separately liable for the $30,500 cost the government claims to repair fences and monuments at the submarine base. The judge also ruled that Liz did not accept responsibility for her actions by not being suitably repentant and had 11 previous convictions thereby needing some deterrence. All the defense arguments for mitigation were ruled against.
Frida Berrigan, Liz’s daughter, gave a spirited statement of support for her mother attesting to her lifelong commitment to peace. “…as a 46 year-old white citizen in a nation that is going to spend $720 plus billion on the military this year, even in the face of an economy smashing pandemic that has killed 100,000 people and laid bare the stark inequity and fundamental brokenness of every fiber of the social safety net, I am grateful that people like my mother are willing to stand up and say: “Trident is a crime.” (Her full statement will be on the website: Statement.)
Finally Elizabeth spoke about what motivated her to join this action and take such risks. She quoted the biblical exhortation to “Beat swords into plowshares” from Isaiah and said, “All my life I’ve tried to follow the prophet, Isaiah, to stop learning war… All my life I have spoken and written against nuclear weapons and I believe these are contrary to life, destructive of life on every single level.”
The sentencing hearing began with technical glitches and was adjourned for more than a half hour while these were worked out. There were 270 people listening to the audio feed when adjourned and due to some confusion about getting back on only 230 were on for the actual hearing.
The other six co-defendants are scheduled for sentencing for June 29 & 30 but they are choosing to be sentenced in person in court with family and the public present and it is not certain at this time if that will be allowed or if there will be further delays.
Martin Gugino, the elderly man who was knocked down to the sidewalk by Buffalo police and lay bleeding from his head is a long-time peace activist and recently made two video statements which were viewed hundreds of times in support of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 activists.
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