The Nuclear Resister networks the anti-nuclear and anti-war resistance movement while acting as a clearinghouse for information about contemporary nonviolent resistance to war and the nuclear threat. Our emphasis is on support for the women and men jailed for these actions. This website is the online companion to the Nuclear Resister newsletter, a more comprehensive chronicle.
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Photo by Rose McPartland
On April 17, Holy Thursday, seven participants of a Holy Week peace pilgrimage in Connecticut were arrested while blocking the entrance leading to the engineering building of General Dynamics/Electric Boat. Before they were arrested, together with the other peace walkers, they performed a foot washing in the road and held long banners that read “Holy Thursday: Jesus Commanded ‘Love One Another'” and “Stop Engineering the End of the World.”
Ellen Grady, Clare Grady, Linden Jenkins, Steve Baggarly, Dimitri Kadiev, Karen Gargamelli-McCreight and Chris Spicer Hankle were charged with disorderly conduct, and appeared for their arraignment in Connecticut Superior Court in New London on Thursday, May 1. Five of the activists took the community service that was offered. Chris Spicer and Steve Baggarly are waiting to be notified about a trial date.
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Photo of Catherine Hourcade by John Amidon
During the Nevada Desert Experience’s annual Holy Week Sacred Peace Walk, protesters blocked the gate at Nevada’s Creech Air Force Base on April 16 at 7:15 a.m. About a dozen peace walkers stood in the road until the Las Vegas Metro Police declared it an illegal assembly and threatened to arrest them. Amaya Rodriguez, Catherine Hourcade and Sylver Pondolfino refused to leave the road and were arrested. The three activists were issued a citation for “pedestrian in the road way”, and were instructed to appear on May 28 in Las Vegas Municipal Court.
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Dear Friend,
Here is what we have been up to this Lent!
After moments of prayer and reflection, under the beautiful, sparkling blue spring sky, Ray, Dan and Carmel approached the front entrance of the Ministry of Defence in London on April 2.
It was unguarded, with only a trickle of workers entering and leaving. Ray climbed the steps and onto the plinth under the sign labelling the building.
He wrote everything he had planned to write in charcoal under the mark of a cross. “Trident is genocide, choose life not terror”.
He stood with his arms out and palms open indicating his non-violence and waited.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[Statement] Condemning the police who responded to peaceful actions of nonviolent civil disobedience with arrest! Jeju is not a U.S. colony! Close the Jeju Naval Base that is turning Jeju into an outpost of the U.S. against China!
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Photo by Angel White Eyes for NDN Collective
A beautiful and historic day –
This morning, February 18, at 8:40 a.m. eastern time, Leonard Peltier walked out of FCI Coleman in Florida and is headed home to the Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota!!
He still has restrictions of home confinement, but after almost 50 years, he is no longer in a prison cell.
After 45 years of the Nuclear Resister reporting on and encouraging support for Leonard Peltier, today, with full and grateful hearts, we join many thousands of people around the world welcoming him out of prison!
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by Brian Terrell
February 11, 2025
While participating in an international peace camp on July 14, 2019 organized by Nukewatch and GAAA, Susan Crane of Redwood City, California and Susan van der Hijden of Amsterdam and I were apprehended by German Military police after cutting a hole in the security fence and entering the airfield at Büchel, Germany, with a banner that read “Atomwaffen sind Illegal- Fliegelhorst Büchel ist ein Tator!” (Nuclear weapons are illegal, Büchel airfield is a crime scene). Despite our assurances to the soldiers guarding the base that our intentions were not intended to violate the law but to call attention to the crime of the United States Air Force 702 Munitions Support Squadron keeping about 20 nuclear B61 bombs there, we were turned over to civilian police, cited and released.
It was only when I returned to a protest at Büchel again two years later in July of 2021 that I was served documents by local police informing me that the previous July, 2020, the court in Cochem had issued a penalty order against me and a fine of 900 euros for trespassing and unlawfully damaging property. Susan and Susan had both been served the same papers earlier and had already filed appeals, so I also filed my own, hoping to argue my case in a German courtroom.
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From the White House
Statement from President Joe Biden
January 20, 2025
The President is commuting the life sentence imposed on Leonard Peltier so that he serves the remainder of his sentence in home confinement. He is now 80 years old, suffers from severe health ailments, and has spent the majority of his life (nearly half a century) in prison. This commutation will enable Mr. Peltier to spend his remaining days in home confinement but will not pardon him for his underlying crimes.
Mr. Peltier is a Native American activist who is currently serving life in prison for killing two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and escaping from federal prison. Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. Attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier’s prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison.
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