{"id":23216,"date":"2021-02-22T06:38:43","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T11:38:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=23216"},"modified":"2024-06-08T22:17:31","modified_gmt":"2024-06-08T20:17:31","slug":"united-states-who-is-clare-grady-and-why-should-we-care-that-she-is-in-federal-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=23216","title":{"rendered":"United States: Who Is Clare Grady and Why Should We Care that She is in Federal Prison?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION <\/p>\n

An article by Jeremy Kuzmarov from CovertAction Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

On April 4, 2018\u2014a date symbolically chosen because it is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s assassination\u2014Clare Grady and six other activists broke into the Kings Bay Submarine base in St. Mary\u2019s, Georgia, the largest nuclear submarine base in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They carried hammers and baby bottles filled with their own blood. Their purpose? To symbolically \u201cbeat swords into plowshares,\u201d as prophesied in\u00a0Isaiah 2:4<\/a>, by disarming one of the world\u2019s deadliest swords\u2014the Trident nuclear submarine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nPlowshares 7 congregate outside courthouse during their trial for breaking into the Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia. Martha Hennessy, Kathleen Rumpf (co-defendent in another Plowshares case), Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Carmen Trotta, Patrick O\u2019Neill, Liz McAlister. (July 12th,\u00a02019)\u00a0 [Source:\u00a0beyondnuclearinternational.org<\/a>]
\n<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n

It was no walk in the park<\/strong><\/p>\n

First, using a bolt cutter, this unlikely commando team of 60-, 70- and 80-year-old priests, grandmothers and grandfathers squeezed themselves through a remote gate on the base. Then they trekked, slopped, and splashed through two miles of notoriously inhospitable Southern Georgia swampland, swarming with ticks, fire ants, earwigs and mosquitoes\u2014not to mention poisonous\u00a0rattlesnakes\u2014as well as venomous scorpions only an inch in length but whose sting can be fatal, and alligators, of which Georgia boasts a population of more than 200,000.<\/p>\n

Finally, as reported by\u00a0World Socialist Website<\/a>, they reached a location \u201cwhere they prayed, read from Scripture, splashed bottles of their own blood onto a wall, spray-painted messages against nuclear weapons onto a sidewalk, hammered on parts of a shrine to nuclear missiles and hung protest banners.\u201d<\/p>\n

As agreed in advance, all seven participants\u2014Clare Grady, Father Stephen Kelly, Mark Colville, Martha Hennessy, Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O\u2019Neill, and Carmen Trotta\u2014remained at the site, peacefully awaiting the police, so they could explain the reason for their actions. They were arrested, tried, and then convicted on October 24, 2019, in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Georgia for the crime of conspiracy, destruction of property on a naval installation, depredation of government property, and trespass.<\/p>\n

Clare Grady was sentenced to a one-year prison term in Alderson Federal Prison in West Virginia, which began on February 10th, 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the other six activists: Carmen Trotta was sentenced to 14 months; Patrick O\u2019Neill to 14 months followed by two years of supervised probation. (He has appealed the sentence.); Steve Kelly to 33-months less time served and three years of supervised probation; Martha Hennessy to 10 months; and Elizabeth McAlister to time served, which was the 17 months she had spent in prison awaiting trial. (She was also sentenced to three years of probation.). Mark Colville will be sentenced in April.<\/p>\n

\u201cFestival of Hope\u201d in Celebration of Clare Grady and the Plowshares 7<\/strong><\/p>\n

Going to prison has not discouraged Clare Grady, nor will it deter her from continued opposition to the makers of war and mass death who control our national government. To celebrate Clare Grady\u2019s resilience and determination, and that of her six companions, the antiwar group\u00a0Code Pink\u00a0<\/a> hosted a “Festival of Hope” webinar<\/a>\u00a0in honor of Clare and the\u00a0Kings Bay Plowshares 7\u00a0<\/a> on February 7, 2021, three days before the start of Clare\u2019s prison term.<\/p>\n

Try watching this video on www.youtube.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Many who spoke at this virtual convocation are long-time activists who have spent their lives in the service of world peace and universal community. They include:\u00a0
\n* Agnes Williams, a Seneca leader working in western New York;
\n* Leona Morgan, a Din\u00e9 leader from the Navajo Nation, working in New Mexico and Arizona to stop uranium production and dumping on their lands;
\n* Clare Daly, Irish Parliamentarian and a co-defendant in an Irish trial of civil resistance to U.S. warplanes refueling at Shannon Airport;
\n* Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima survivor who has worked tirelessly to end nuclear weapons and has been instrumental in the enactment of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that went into force last week;
\n* Professor Russell Rickford, Cornell University historian of the Black Freedom Struggle and the Black Radical Tradition and an organizer with the Democratic Socialists of America;
\n* Emma O\u2019Grady, writer, and actor from County Galway, Ireland;
\n* Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellermann, Detroit theologian, author, nonviolent community activist and civil resister to water shut-offs, who offered a closing prayer.<\/p>\n

Setsuko Thurlow, a Hiroshima bomb survivor voiced her support for Grady and the Plowshares 7 in a pre-recorded statement that was played at the \u201cFestival of Hope.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the statement, Setsuko described in vivid detail her experience in Hiroshima on the fateful day of August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped.<\/p>\n

At the time, Setsuko was on an excursion away from her school. Suddenly, she said, she was \u201cblown into the air\u201d and felt herself \u201cfloating\u201d before she woke up to find herself in darkness under a collapsed building.<\/p>\n

After hearing a male voice telling her \u201cnot to give up,\u201d a soldier helped free Setsuko from the building, which was now on fire.<\/p>\n

Outside, the air was filled with particles, and people moved on the streets as if they were ghosts, with their hair standing up to the sky, and their skin and flesh burned.<\/p>\n

Some of the people had their intestines bulging out while others had their own eyeballs in their hands.<\/p>\n

Setsuko escaped to a hill which was packed with dead bodies and people were begging for water.<\/p>\n

Among the thousands of innocent people killed on that day were nine members of Setsuko\u2019s family, including her aunt, uncle, sister and four-year-old nephew, whose small body became unrecognizable.<\/p>\n

Setsuko stated that \u201cthis is what nuclear war does; it results in indescribable mass killing and suffering. Today, the weapons are even more destructive than in 1945, and could kill a million people in a quick moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Standing up for Humanity<\/strong><\/p>\n

Setsuko\u2019s warning was heeded by other speakers at the webinar who further emphasized the health hazards of nuclear energy and its contamination of the environment.<\/p>\n

Clare Daly, a member of the European parliament who was jailed for protesting against U.S. military planes flying out of Shannon Airport in Ireland, stated that the \u201cstance taken by Clare [Grady] was absolutely moral and courageous, she is a beacon to activists around the world. Clare joins people like Julian Assange in going to jail for standing up for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grady\u2019s daughter, Leah, read a letter from Plowshares 7 activist Martha Hennessy, currently serving out her ten-month sentence at the Danbury Correctional Institution in Connecticut, who recalled how she and Clare had been imprisoned together for protest acts in the early 1980s and that Clare had taught her how to be a role model to other incarcerated women.<\/p>\n

Patrick O\u2019Neill, who is serving a 14-month sentence, sent a message from the Elkton Correctional Institution in Ohio that Clare will be a \u201clight in the darkness\u201d for women in her next stop, \u201ca den of oppression and despair.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the trial, Plowshares 7 attorneys had tried to argue that the\u00a0Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 protected the protest because the seven were motivated by their faith\u00a0<\/a> and that\u00a0nuclear weapons are illegal, as an indictment Hennessy taped to the door of the base alleged<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When Hennessy attempted to\u00a0show the jury photos of bodies at Hiroshima, the judge objected<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At their sentencing, Plowshares activists invoked the Nuremberg principle, stating that it was their duty to try to\u00a0stop another nuclear holocaust<\/a>, and that those who\u00a0\u201csay nothing in the face of evil, are contributing to evil by their collective silence.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Steve Kelley, who is a Jesuit priest said that he considered himself a \u201cprisoner of conscience for Christ,\u201d preaching against \u00a0\u201cthe sin that flourishes in weapons of mass destruction.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Grady stated at her sentencing that the weapons she had tried to sabotage were “not private property, they belong to the people of the United States, they belong to me, to you, to us.”<\/a><\/p>\n

(continued in right column)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Question for this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\n

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?<\/a><\/p>\n

How can just one or a few persons contribute to peace and justice?<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

(continued from left column)<\/p>\n

These weapons kill and cause harm in our name, and with our money. This omnicidal weapon doesn\u2019t just kill IF it is launched, it kills every day. Indigenous people are, and continue to be, some of the first victims of nuclear weapons\u2014the mining, refining, testing, and dumping of radioactive material for nuclear weapons all happens on Native Land. The trillions of dollars spent on nuclear weapons are resources STOLEN from the planet and her people.\u201d[1]<\/p>\n

History<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most members of the Plowshares 7 are affiliated with the Catholic Worker movement which is committed to nonviolence, voluntary poverty, prayer, and hospitality for the homeless, exiled, hungry, and forsaken.<\/p>\n

Art Laffin,\u00a0co-editor of Swords into Plowshares\u2014Nonviolent Direct Action for Disarmament explained\u00a0<\/a> that \u201cthe main symbols used in plowshares actions are hammers and blood. Hammers are used to literally begin the process of disarmament that thousands of talks and numerous treaties have failed to accomplish. The hammer is used to take apart as well as create, and to point to the urgency for conversion of war and weapons production to products that enhance life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liz McAlister has been an anti-war activist since\u00a0she and her late husband, Philip Berrigan, destroyed draft cards during the Vietnam War<\/a>, and Martha Hennessy is the granddaughter of\u00a0Dorothy Day, the Catholic Worker Movement founder\u00a0<\/a> who is on her way to being\u00a0canonized as a saint by the Vatican<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Plowshares group has carried out more than 100 civil disobedience acts to protest the U.S. warfare state since September 1980 when eight peace activists\u2014including Daniel and Philip Berrigan, who had been known for their antiwar activism in the Vietnam era\u2014entered the General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania<\/a>, where the nose cones for the Mark 12-A nuclear warheads were manufactured.<\/p>\n

With hammers and blood, the eight enacted the biblical prophecies of Isaiah (2:4) and Micah (4:3) to \u201cbeat swords into plowshares\u201d by\u00a0hammering on two of the nose cones and pouring blood on documents<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Plowshares 8\u2019s subsequent legal battle was recreated in\u00a0Emile de Antonio<\/a>\u2019s 1982 film\u00a0In the King of Prussia<\/a>,\u00a0which starred\u00a0Martin Sheen\u00a0<\/a> and featured appearances by the Plowshares 8 as themselves.
\n\u2028
\n\u2028Since the Plowshares 8 action, others have entered military bases and weapons facilities and\u00a0symbolically and actually disarmed components of U.S. first-strike nuclear weapons systems<\/a>: the MX, Pershing II, Cruise, Minuteman ICBMs, Trident II missiles, Trident submarines, B-52 bombers, P-3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft, the Navstar system, the ELF communication system, the Milstar satellite system, a nuclear capable battleship and the Aegis destroyer.<\/p>\n

Combat aircraft used for military intervention, such as the F-111 fighter bomber, the F-15A fighter, the F-18 bomber, the A-10 Warthog, the Hawk aircraft, as well as combat helicopters and other conventional weapons, including aircraft missile launchers, bazookas, grenade throwers, and AK-5 automatic rifles, have also been targeted.<\/p>\n

One of the most successful actions took place at the\u00a0Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear facility in July 2012\u00a0<\/a> when Mike Walli, Sr., Megan Rice, and Greg Boertje-Obed hammered on the cornerstone of the newly built Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility, poured blood and spray-painted antiwar messages on it. Because of so-called security issues, this action prompted authorities to close what has been called the \u201cFt. Knox of Uranium,\u201d for an unprecedented three weeks.<\/p>\n

According to William Hartung, the director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, the limited mainstream media coverage of the Oak Ridge protest and Congressional reaction\u2014as with the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 action\u2014\u201cwere more about how to protect the weapons from protesters than to protect us from the weapons<\/a>. This rhetoric about safety and security of the weapons complex, and protecting \u2018special materials\u2019\u2014a euphemism for ingredients for bombs that can end life as we know it\u2014distracts from the real issue: These are weapons of mass slaughter that must be eliminated before they eliminate us.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kings Bay Base<\/strong><\/p>\n

When the Plowshares 7 cut through a padlock and entered the 17,000 acre Kings Bay Base on April 4, 2018, they were equipped with crime-scene tape, banners reading \u201cThe Ultimate Logic of Trident is Omnicide\u201d and \u201cNuclear Weapons: Illegal\u2014Immoral,\u201d and an\u00a0indictment charging the U.S. government with crimes against peace<\/a>, along with the hammers and blood.<\/p>\n

One of their main challenges was to avoid detection from the guard towers\u00a0as a loudspeaker overhead blared: \u201cDeadly force is authorized!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

After splitting up, the activists went to three sites on the base: the SWFLANT administration building, the D5 Missile monument installation, and the nuclear weapons storage bunkers.<\/p>\n

Patrick O\u2019Neill attached a poster of Martin Luther King, Jr., to a mock-up of a Trident II D5 ballistic missile at the welcome area, commenting afterwards:\u00a0\u201cI mean, my God, you\u2019re gonna build a statue for something that if it\u2019s used would blow up a whole city full of people. This is your idea of welcoming people? I mean, it\u2019s sick.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Home to more than 1,000 enlisted and civilian government workers and their families, Kings Bay houses at least six nuclear submarines, each armed with 20\u00a0Trident\u00a0submarine-launched ballistic missiles of the multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) variety. Each missile contains numerous nuclear warheads, providing a thermonuclear force multiplier and overwhelming first-strike capability as\u00a0part of the U.S. nuclear triad.<\/p>\n

According to the Navy, the ballistic missile submarines serve as a\u00a0launch platform for intercontinental missiles\u00a0that are designed specifically for\u00a0stealth and the precise delivery of nuclear warheads.<\/p>\n

If the Trident were ever launched, it would cause\u00a0100 times more damage than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Patrick O\u2019Neill called it\u00a0\u201cthe most insidious and evil weapon of mass destruction ever constructed.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The Kings Bay site was opened in 1979 during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, the former Governor of Georgia and a Navy veteran and submarine officer who promoted a naval buildup.<\/p>\n

The decision to base the Trident submarines at Kings Bay started the largest peacetime construction program ever undertaken by the U.S. Navy. It took nine years to build at a cost of $1.3 billion.<\/p>\n

In preparation for the arrival of new submarines mandated under a trillion dollar nuclear weapon modernization program, a major renovation\u00a0is coming to the Kings Bay waterfront.<\/p>\n

The project, estimated to cost more than $840 million, will include $500 million in upgrades to the dry dock and other infrastructure, as well as a\u00a0$138.6 million nuclear regional maintenance facility, which makes the Plowshares work ever the more urgent. \u00a0<\/p>\n

In the Shadow of the Berrigan Brothers and Oscar Romero<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reverend Bill Wylie-Kellerman situated Clare Grady and the Plowshares 7 at the \u201cFestival of Hope\u201d in the tradition of Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and Oscar Romero, El Salvador\u2019s archbishop who was murdered by death squads in 1980 after he spoke out against the ruling oligarchy and for the poor and oppressed.<\/p>\n

Cornell University historian Russell Rickford compared Grady to Mae Mallory, an antiwar and Black Power militant who was close with Malcolm X.<\/p>\n

Flattered by such comparisons, Grady reiterated at the \u201cFestival of Hope\u201d that she had been motivated by \u201creligious principle and the desire to oppose violence and the normalization of killing; the unrepentant killing that hardly raises eyebrows anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grady noted that \u201cthe U.S. government plans to spend $100,000 per minute for the next ten years on nuclear weapons and has 800 military bases.<\/p>\n

The cost to keep one soldier in Afghanistan for one year is one million dollars, and the cost to keep a prisoner in prison for one year is up to $70,000 while the cost to keep a student in college for a year is far less.\u201d<\/p>\n

While dreading going back to prison\u2014or what she calls the belly of the beast\u2014Grady said she has encountered some of her best teachers of resistance in prison, and was inspired by inmates in St. Louis who broke out of their cells and broke windows and threw furniture but did not engage in violence in pressing for more humane conditions.<\/p>\n

Grady\u2019s sister Mary Ann, as the last speaker at the webinar, compared the present moment to 1979 when the anti-nuclear movement was just getting off the ground. By the end of the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had worked together to reduce the nuclear stockpiles of the U.S. and Russia, which is urgently needed today.<\/p>\n

With the\u00a0Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists\u2019\u00a0Doomsday Clock sitting at 100 seconds to midnight<\/a>, Grady said that the peace movement should continue pushing for divestment from nuclear-weapons\u2019 producing companies\u2014which New York\u2019s City Council has recently proposed<\/a>\u2014while supporting acts of civil disobedience along the model of the Plowshares 7 who will have left their mark on history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION An article by Jeremy Kuzmarov from CovertAction Magazine On April 4, 2018\u2014a date symbolically chosen because it is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.\u2019s assassination\u2014Clare Grady and six other activists broke into the Kings Bay Submarine base in St. Mary\u2019s, Georgia, the largest nuclear submarine base in the world.\u00a0 … Continue reading United States: Who Is Clare Grady and Why Should We Care that She is in Federal Prison?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,15,91],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-23216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disarmament","category-information","category-north-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}