Monthly Archive for March, 2025

Post-prison reflection from Brian Terrell

Posted on March 23, 2025

Chris Danowski & Brian Terrell

The Only Sane Solution…

Resisting Nuclear Weapons in Europe

“We still hold that nonviolent resistance is the only sane solution, and that we have to continue to make our voice heard until we are finally silenced–and even then, in jail or concentration camp, to express ourselves.” Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker, 1940

March 22, 2025

Brian Terrell

When I arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport on February 20, my passport was flagged and I was informed that due to a previous arrest at Volkel airbase, where a U.S. Airforce squadron keeps 20 nuclear bombs ready to load onto Dutch planes in a NATO “nuclear sharing” arrangement, I was banned from entering Europe and would be immediately flown back to the United States. I explained to the immigration officer that I had an order from a German court to turn myself in to the prison at Wittlich on February 26 for a 15-day sentence for taking direct action at Büchel, the German airbase where there is a similar nuclear sharing relationship in 2019. After a short wait my passport was returned and I was waved through the queue to join my good friend Chris Danowski patiently waiting in the arrivals area to take me to Jeanette Noel Huis, the Catholic Worker in Amsterdam.

 » Read more…

Seventeen arrests in NYC during protest in support of nuclear ban treaty

Posted on March 12, 2025

Photo by Hideko Otake

On March 5, 17 people were arrested in New York City at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations during a protest in support of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Participants asked for a meeting with the interim U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. and were refused. Others blocked First Avenue with a giant banner reading “U.S. Join the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

March 5th was the 55th anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which legally binds the U.S. to complete nuclear disarmament at an early date. It was also Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the Christian penitential season of Lent. Another banner held by protesters read, “Nuclear War Means the World in Ashes.” Archbishop John Wester of Santa Fe, New Mexico and author of the only Catholic pastoral letter on nuclear disarmament, distributed ashes prior to the protest.

From March 3-7, the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons took place at the U.N. “Half of the world’s countries have either ratified or signed the treaty and the U.S. won’t send anyone across the street to observe what is happening with the only treaty negotiated to facilitate global, verifiable nuclear disarmament,” said Kelly Lundeen of Nukewatch. “The U.S. is the key to nuclear disarmament and must sign the treaty and organize the other nuclear armed states to join.”

 » Read more…

Two nuclear resisters arrested during Ash Wednesday witness at Tucson’s Raytheon plant

Posted on March 8, 2025

Photo by Felice Cohen-Joppa

Members of the Pacific Life Community from California, Oregon, Washington, Texas, Nevada and Arizona met in St. David, Arizona from March 3–6 for their annual gathering and nuclear weapons protest. Two members of the faith-based network were arrested on Ash Wednesday, March 5 during a nonviolent resistance action at the Raytheon weapons factory in Tucson, Arizona. 

In April, 2020 the Pentagon named Raytheon in Tucson as the sole-source contractor for a $16 billion dollar program to develop and produce the Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) missile, an all-new nuclear-armed cruise missile to be launched from the wings of warplanes. Production of this missile violates the spirit and letter of the 2017 United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in January 2021. The Treaty’s Third Meeting of States Parties was taking place at the United Nations in New York City the same week as the Pacific Life Community gathering and action.

 » Read more…