"Twenty years ago, on September 9, 1980, a group of people who named themselves 'Plowshares Eight' carried out the first plowshare action. We remember and celebrate that they entered a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania where the nose cones for Mark-12A nuclear warheads were manufactured. With carpenters' hammers they enacted the biblical prophecy to hammer swords into plowshares. They were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison terms. News of this simple, beautiful action was far-reaching. Since the 'Plowshares Eight' there have been thousands of nonviolent civil resistance actions and more than 70 direct disarmament actions around the world.

"Confronted with what we believe to be one of the most critical escalations of United States weaponry in modern times, we, women religious, who have named ourselves 'Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares', entered [Peterson Air Force Base] on September 9, 2000 to enflesh the Micah 4:3 prophecy..."

On September 9, Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, hosted 150,000 visitors at an open house. Five nuns, representing three religious orders of the Catholic Church, were among the crowd, surveying the weapons on display. Sr. Anne Montgomery RSCJ recalled her realization of twenty years earlier as part of the first Plowshares disarmament group, "If there is a weapon before me, I must disarm it." She, along with Carol Gilbert OP, Jackie Hudson OP, Liz Walters IHM, and Ardeth Platte OP, found a Milstar military communications satellite ground station and an F-18 A Hornet fighter-bomber, in wide use against Iraq. Their hammers descended four times each (20 strikes in all), blood was poured and two banners unfurled. The women knelt in prayer as military police moved in quickly to make arrests and hustle the scenario of disarmament out of view.

The nuns, calling themselves "Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares," were preliminarily charged in state court with felony criminal mischief, obstruction of government operations and conspiracy to engage in these acts. They refused to post $1000 bond and were held in the El Paso County Jail.

But while the hopeful image of disarmament was kept from many in attendance at the air show, the reality of five nuns, in age from 52 to 73, imprisoned for living their faith in "peace on earth as there is in heaven," was too much for a spectacle-driven media to ignore.

Before a week had passed, front-page stories in Denver and Colorado Springs papers sympathetically profiled the women and the protest movement they exemplified. TV and radio coverage was headed for national exposure, and the Air Force and county prosecutors seemed somewhat chagrined.

Late Friday afternoon, September 15, the five headed off to court, expecting formal arraignment and possibly a transfer to federal custody and charges.

Instead, the Air Force now claimed damage was minimal, so state charges were all dismissed and no federal prosecutors were waiting. To the complete surprise of the women and local supporters, they were released that evening. The state said investigation would continue but there has been no indication of further prosecution of the five peace activists.

A month earlier, at the international air show in Abbotsford, British Columbia, members of Ploughshares Fraser Valley and the Langley Mennonite Fellowship placed a prayer tent and kept peace vigil just outside the weekend festival. They leafletted against the presentation of violence as entertainment, and led Peacemakers Tours to learn more about the warplanes on display. Henry Knause writes that four people also "pasted photos of victims of war on the nose of an F-18 and also put hand prints using their own blood on the nose of the plane. There however were not arrests. There was negotiation between the four protesters and the security and police and it resulted in a lot of positive dialogue, opportunities to have a presence the next day and it seemed the removal of some of the U.S. planes on the last day of the air show."

For more information, contact the Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, c/o Citizens for Peace in Space, POB 915, Colorado Springs, CO 80901, (719)389-0644.