taken from Leonard Eiger’s report – see full account at the Disarm Now Plowshares blog
They gathered on Good Friday – Catholic Workers, nuns, priests and lay people – and walked to the Lockheed Martin facility in Sunnyvale, California where day in and day out people go to work building the Trident II D-5 missiles that are deployed on our nation’s ballistic missile submarines.
They stood vigil with signs and banners carrying messages of love and peace and calling on all good people to stop making war. Some of those present went into the roadway carrying a cross and peace sign flag, blocking the entrance to Lockheed Martin in an act of nonviolent resistance to nuclear weapons and war-making. Six were arrested by Sunnyvale police.
Each of those Trident missiles (and each submarine carries 24) is fitted with four (and as many as eight) thermonuclear warheads, each of which is many times more destructive than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. These submarines patrol 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on alert, prepared to launch their horrific weapons, threatening humanity with omnicide.
Such a thing is quite simply an abomination before God.
Those arrested for their witness were Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ, Susan Crane, Larry Purcell, Mary Jane Parrine, Fr. Louis Vitale, OFM, and Ed Ehmke.
(Editor’s note: Purcell and Kelly, who wouldn’t sign for their release, are being held in jail pending a court appearance on April 3. Fr. Kelly was told by police that he’s got an outstanding federal warrant, raising the possibility of him being taken into federal custody.]