Hiroshima Day marked by Kansas City activist sentencing
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Offering the U.S. magistrate judge hearing her case a tiny box from Japan carrying a tightly folded peace crane, a Catholic activist here was sentenced to eight hours of community service for having blocked the entrance to a local nuclear weapons manufacturing facility.
The civil disobedience sentence in federal court came on the 65th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima.
Jane Stoever, a local peace activist, had pleaded no contest to the disorderly conduct charges stemming from an action with three others June 18. The others agreed to pay fines and were not called before the judge.
Stoever, who was represented by her husband, attorney Henry Stoever, had asked for community service in lieu of a fine.
In her statement to Judge John T. Maughmer, Stoever called attention to a speech given by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kan. May 8.
In that speech Gates noted that the last decade has seen an explosion of defense spending almost like a ‘gusher’ and promised that “the gusher has been turned off, and will stay off for a good period of time.”
