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PDF version11 anti-nuke activists in court this week, 2 sentenced to jail yesterday
by Joshua J. McElwee on Sep. 13, 2011
"When we threaten other nations with nuclear weapons, we can hardly say we are bent on peace, sisterhood and brotherhood. Nagasaki and Hiroshima have shown us the terrible destructive power of these bombs. We can do something as a nation instead of using our power to show Afghans around, we can share with one another, enter into a dialogue.
Two anti-nuclear activists were sentenced to jail yesterday for acts of civil disobedience at the Y-12 National Security Complex, a key U.S. nuclear weapons production and maintenance compound, to protest a proposed major new facility at the Oak Ridge, Tenn., site.
Jean Gump and Jesuit Fr. Bill Bichsel, part of a group of twelve activists who were found guilty last May of criminal trespass at the site, were sentenced by U.S. Magistrate Judge Bruce Guyton to time served and three months in jail, respectively.
Construction of a major new nuclear weapons manufacturing facility at the Oak Ridge complex, projected by the Army Corps of Engineers to cost some $7.5 billion, was officially announced by the federal government July 25.
Gump and Bichsel were part of a group of 13 who took part in the July 5, 2010, action, which came at the end of a 200-strong peace rally outside the gates of the complex. After a prayer vigil, 13 people climbed over a barbed wire fence onto the property and were arrested, Ralph Hutchison, a coordinator for the group opposing the new Tennessee facility’s construction, told NCR in May.
Nine of the eleven remaining activists are scheduled to face sentencing in front of Guyton throughout this week and next. Another defendant, Dominican Sr. Jackie Hudson, passed away Aug. 3. The last of the group, David Corcoran, was not part of the May trial because of illness. His trial date is set for Nov. 14.
Bichsel, who was also part of an anti-nuclear action in Tacoma Washington in 2009, recently concluded a three-month sentence for that protest.
Seven others in the Oak Ridge group were taken into local custody after the May trial because they would not accept supervised release until sentencing. Gump, who was originally part of the group held in custody, had been released at the time of sentencing due to family concerns.
Hutchison, the coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, posted an update to the group’s Web site yesterday with details about the sentencing, including a transcription of Bichsel’s statement to the court.
Said Bichsel:
Myself, in this court of justice, I want today to recommit myself to justice, to nonviolence, to the love of Jesus, to work with others of different beliefs. I want to commit myself in conjunction with Jackie Hudson, my co-defendant who died a short while ago, she is also a very moving spirit….
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I recommit myself in the spirit of Gandhi, of Martin Luther King, Jr, of Oscar Romero. I stand hoping to have the strength to carry out this commitment, even to death, in this courtroom of justice."
Keep following NCRonline.org this week for updates as the activists are sentenced.
Related coverage:
Once again I am saddenned and
Once again I am saddenned and very perplexed over the willingness of these protestors to climb over barbed wire fences and onto secured US facilities... Yes I think their philosophy and their cause and faith are sound... but NO... this is not a smart way to get the message across... Why to they forget that they live in a country where free speech is protected
In jail they can do nothing...
Stop this way of protesting because it gets no where... Use your energy and resources in other ways to engage the press and the community and take the matters that need to be challenged in court and challenge them as well... but you need not get arrested for it... People will join a prayer vigil in good conscience... but there is not reason to get arrested when you have a free press
Here is why, JIESH: Said
Here is why, JIESH:
Said Bichsel:
"When we threaten other nations with nuclear weapons, we can hardly say we are bent on peace, sisterhood and brotherhood. Nagasaki and Hiroshima have shown us the terrible destructive power of these bombs. We can do something as a nation instead of using our power to show Afghans around, we can share with one another, enter into a dialogue.
Myself, in this court of justice, I want today to recommit myself to justice, to nonviolence, to the love of Jesus, to work with others of different beliefs. I want to commit myself in conjunction with Jackie Hudson, my co-defendant who died a short while ago, she is also a very moving spirit….
I recommit myself in the spirit of Gandhi, of Martin Luther King, Jr, of Oscar Romero. I stand hoping to have the strength to carry out this commitment, even to death, in this courtroom of justice."
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Thoreau also explains why in Civil Disobedience, and asks, what are you doing out there?
Upon this was our nation built, and our faith repels as anti-life any involvement with nuclear weapons but to stop them by any means necessary
anyway, do we not have some kind of disarmament treaty going on forbidding their further production? ANd yet we traveled to Los Alamos this Hiroshima Day to protest peacefully, silently, the production of dozens more plutonium pits there
HAve we Catholics not read our Bishops' book the Challenge of Peace, which forbids the development, production, possession and use of nuclear weapons?
It makes them feel good.
It makes them feel good.
Would that the free press, at
Would that the free press, at least the mainstream free press would report on these things. If three Tea Party Kochpuppets show up in some backwater protesting civilization, they're reported on in the mainstream press. If over a thousand people are arrested in front of the White House protesting the Tar Sands pipeline throught the center of the US, absolutely nothing. To get any real news (besides whether Lindsay Lohan had another body part tatooed), I go to NCR, Democracy Now or some other outside the mainstream channel.
And another thing, there is no longer anything sacred about military establishments. I'm no pacifist like Father Dear of these pages, but the last thirty years of military adventurism have been disgusting, more a sign of empire than legitimate defense.
read as well
read as well daily
www.diario.com.mx
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