Reprinted with permission from The Catholic Worker, Mary House, NYC for the July 2018 issue.
By Amanda Daloisio
On April 4th, 2018, seven activists entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia. Their destination included the Strategic Weapons Facility Atlantic Administration building, the nuclear weapons storage bunkers and the Trident D5 monument. At each site they used everyday hammers and poured their own blood, dramatically highlighting the destruction inherent in the planning, creation, and use of nuclear weapons and our desperate need to dismantle them. As Martha Hennessy has written since, “We walked onto a military base that harbors the ultimate destruction and we prayed for the power of a message, of a witness that could reach many ears; conversion of free will towards life-giving work and away from death-dealing.” Calling themselves the Kings Bay Plowshares, they became the latest in over one hundred similar actions that have spanned the last thirty-eight years.
Opened in 1979, the Kings Bay Naval Base is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world, housing six ballistic missile and two guided missile submarines. Activist Mark Colville wrote from jail, “The destructive capacity of the D-5 missiles fitted for the six Trident submarines home-ported at Kings Bay is enough to kill an estimate of more than six billion people. “(See nukewatchinfo.org) So it was on this site that they gathered to take action, to draw the attention of a distracted society to the very real consequences of this one part of the US nuclear arsenal. As Liz McAlister explained “We acted to expose this criminality and withdraw our consent to participate in the crime of the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons.”
The first Plowshares action occurred on September 9th, 1980, when eight activists went to the General Electric ReEntry Division in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. Then, and today, Plowshares activists enact the Biblical call of Isaiah, “They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.” Hammers are used to dismantle our weapons of war but also to remind us of all we are capable of building for the common good. Blood is poured to bring home the blood shed worldwide by our constant thirst for war making. The seven spelled it out by writing Love One Another on the ground, a reminder that God’s call to us is that of justice and peacemaking. Writes Liz McAlister, “But, above all, we come with our voices and our lives. We raise our voices in a cry to dismantle the weapons—all of them and we risk life and limb and our future hopes to make this plea: Dismantle the Weapons.”
Reflecting on the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., their statements reads, “Dr. King said, ‘The greatest purveyor of violence in the world (today) is my own government.’ This remains true in the midst of our endless war on terror. The United States has embraced a permanent war economy. ‘Peace through strength’ is a dangerous lie in a world that includes weapons of mass destruction on hair-trigger alert. The weapons from one Trident have the capacity to end life as we know it on planet Earth. Nuclear weapons kill every day through our mining, production, testing, storage, and dumping, primarily on Indigenous Native land. This weapons systems is a cocked gun being held to the head of the planet.”
The seven activists are Mark Colville of New Haven, Connecticut; Clare Grady of Ithaca, New York; Martha Hennessy of Springfield, Vermont; Fr. Steve Kelly, SJ of Oakland, California; Liz McAlister of Baltimore, Maryland; Patrick O’Neill of Garner, North Carolina and Carmen Trotta of the New York, New York. Writes Clare Grady, “We invite others who have been privileged by these systems [referring to Dr. King’s triplets of racism, materialism and militarism] to join us in withdrawing consent from their deadly function and purpose. We live with hope for a nuclear-free, decolonized world.”
For up to date information and to support: www.kingsbayplowshares7.org
