Trident

Guilty!

Yesterday, after two days of prayer, discussion, reading, writing and a well-constructed workshop with our lawyer, Blake Kremer, we had our day in court, or – at least 3 hours of it. It was surprisingly stirring, to hear 6 of us testify in different ways to the intolerable risk we take and the very real harm we do in nurturing nuclear weapons. Nurturing? Harboring? Brandishing? Better: worshiping, because that’s what we’re doing. We are depending on our nuclear weapons to keep us safe and that is a fatal illusion.

(Did I say that Blake is an outstanding legal advocate? What a man! His closing statement was a thing of beauty.  Here it is:  Download Closing.)

In the meantime, here's the official press release.  Download Press release PLC 6 090617. (Thank you, Nick. You, too, are quite the man, cooking for this crowd, with the food Steve bought and the dishes Joe washed.)

The end result: one year of probation which includes a travel restriction (no out of district travel) and 100 hours of community service.

What to worry about on Sept.6

Our trial is this week, at the U.S. District Court, Western Washington 1717 Pacific Avenue Tacoma, WA 98402. September 6, 2017 at 1:30 pm.

I am deeply grateful to the wonderful friends who have written character references for me to present to the judge at sentencing. I’m assuming we’ll be found guilty, since we are stipulating to the facts. (Using the legal terms is like learning a language.)

I am grateful, too, for the prayers. In the end I need courage to focus on what’s important and not to succumb to worry. Every day I think of something new to worry about it and this is a distraction. Today’s worry: North Korea is taunting President Trump and Trump has a single-handed response at the ready.

In the middle of Mass today it occurred to me: what will I wear to court? Now I’m wondering if I should make an emergency shopping trip to Nordstrom’s. I did get my hair cut. The hair stylist asked, “How do you want it?” and I replied, “Anything that doesn’t make me look like an aging hippy.”

 

Preparing for nuclear war - or preventing it?

Here's a recent news article on this topic.

Click right here!

Ethics: a quote from the New York Times

The Ethicist, a column in the New York Times Sunday magazine by Kwame Anthony Appiah, has this to say " There are also cases in which you may violate laws that are reasonable in order to draw attention to political wrongs, as when civil protestors trespass or ignore regulations on peaceable assembly. When the point of doing so is to express your morals ideas, you have to do so in plain sight, which means you must face the legal consequences. ...This is the classic kind of civil disobedience."

Perhaps I should lay out here the moral arguments against nuclear weapons. Others have done so. Most recently Pope Francis has been explicit about the immorality of nuclear weapons. There is a trifecta of urgency around this issue, I think.

1) Who in the United States has the authority to launch these weapons? The answer is terrifying.

2) Who might provoke the commander-in-chief?

3) What kind of money are we spending on this weapons system - and to what end?

Calling attention to these issues, despite the many issues requiring our attention, is worth some civil disobedience.

Who is the victim?

I am thinking that  the  decision process  leading up to  pleading guilty or not guilty is a delicate one. It's important to me  to do this civil disobedience as part of a group, a group formed by the process of prayer. We are not disputing the facts of the case, thereby saving the Navy time and effort to prove we were there and put our feet 12 inches over the line. To all of this I plead guilty. What I cannot abide is the “victim”. There is a choice on the citation which says “Victim?” And yes is checked. And the name of the victim is listed as Society. To this I will not plead guilty.

Something better to do with my time?

I’ve been talking about our upcoming trial on September 6, 2017 and listening to the responses. While people have generally applauded being arrested for civil disobedience most people have a negative reaction to the idea of going to jail for 3 months. “Is this the best use of your time? Couldn’t you just plead guilty, pay the fine and do something positive with those three months?”

(The six of us – one Catholic priest, three Catholic Workers of various ages, and two lay women – have pleaded not guilty. If we plead guilty, an offer of 50 hours of community service is on the table. If we plead not guilty, we could be looking at three months in the federal penitentiary.)

I’ve been mulling this while enjoying the sun this summer, spending time with “The Grands” and reading science fiction. Here’s a quote from Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.

"'If you're going to do something that crazy, save it for when it'll make a difference'"... I still agree. The problem is knowing when what you are about to do will make a difference. I'm not only speaking of the small actions that, cumulatively, over time, or in great numbers, steer the course of events in ways too chaotic or subtle to trace... (but) the single word that directs a person's fate and ultimately the fates of those she comes in come in contact with..."

So, I’m doing something crazy here, and under no illusions that it will make a difference. Nonetheless, it feels like a prayer. It’s been a prayer from the beginning, from the moment Nick and I decided on January 1, 2017, to pray more intentionally about nonviolence.

Crazy

What can we buy for a trillion dollars?

There are 8 deployable nuclear submarines at the naval base on the Kitsap Pennisula in Washington state.. Each sub can carry 24 missiles. Each missile has 8 independently targeted warheads. Each warhead has 38 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb.

The math: 8 x 24 x 8 x 38 = 58,368 cities to be destroyed. (A report compiled from World Atlas calculated that there were 4,416 cities in the world with a population of over 150,000.)

The COST of maintaining this fleet? The US does not disclose the cost, but some estimates indicate that the maintenance runs 20-25 billion/year and the proposed upgrade of this aging arsenal is expected to run to one trillion dollars. This site seems to have some reputable numbers.

It’s hard to think of how much a trillion is. Here’s a way to think of it: right here.

The Federal Budget is our budget. We make the decisions of how to spend our money. The cost of maintaining and renewing nuclear weapons bankrupts our schools, our infrastructure and our children. Where is the real security? Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security but the cost is real.

Let's reflect on what makes the world safe.

Arraignment in Federal Court

First of all, here's a picture of me with my lawyer Blake Kremer, J.D., today. He says to tell you that he normally defends people accused of murder, assault and other violent offenses. His specialty. But his pro bono work is non-violent resistance at the Trident nuclear base near Bremerton. Today, that's me. 

 I'm home and we're trying to process the day. There were six of us, and we decided we would move as a group. I said my own goals had already been met: I wanted to raise awareness of the nuclear issues and I think I did that. At the arraignment we were asked to plead guilty or not guilty. If we pleaded guilty we would each get 50 hours of community service and probation for a year. (This is what they have been giving out lately.)

  

We pleaded not guilty and our trial date is now Sept.6th. Given previous trials, it is likely we will all be found guilty.

 

All rather confusing, and I need to think it out and soak in other perspectives. I would value and appreciate  YOUR thoughts on this.

Crossing the Blue Line

There were six of us and we decided to act as a group, Betsy, Alex, Karan, Steve, Charlie and me. We met at the Pacific Life Community retreat in March and participated in an act of planned civil disobedience at the navy base with  the largest concentration of deployed nuclear weapons in the United States. A nearby center for nonviolence helps organize protests which include civil disobedience at one of the gates to the navy base. People discern what kind of protest they want to make and then folks call the base, tell them we're coming, and alert the county police as to the date and time. Nobody is surprised then. Everything is up front.

This time there were 3 varieties of action: (1) carrying banners across the road and thus halting traffic; (2) providing support by holding protest signs, taking pictures and protecting public safety by providing directions; and (3) "crossing the line."

There is a 6 inch blue line painted across the road way, a hundred yards or so in front of the actual guard post. The road in front of this blue line belongs to the county and thus the county police are contacted. The area beyond the blue line belongs to the naval base and thus crossing the blue line is considered trespassing on naval property. This is a federal misdemeanor.

On March 7, at the end of our weekend retreat, prayer and discernment, about 40 of us walked from Ground Zero Center for Nonviolence to the naval base gate, having told the authorities we were coming. It was sleeting and snowing and the most quiet of mornings as we carried our banners rolled up and then spread out across the road. We celebrated a quiet breaking of the bread with prayer before unfurling the banners. Prayer grounded us all weekend; it was fitting.

8 people received tickets for blocking traffic, my husband Nick among them. More people blocked traffic but the police were random in their ticketing. 6 of us stepped one foot over the blue line. We were reading the Nuremburg Principles aloud as we crossed and stood there, and we each got our own soldier who read aloud to us. We read at each other without listening to each other. At some point we were gently led over to waiting vehicles for some shelter as soldiers laboriously filled out forms. 

At the end of the day, Nick paid his traffic ticket and I was given a notice to appear on June 7th in the Federal Court in Tacoma.

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