30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison

30 Years Ago I Climbed A Fence and Went To Prison by Steve Clemens. February 2011

At the dawn of the Reagan Presidency, just after the death of my father-in-law, I was sentenced to 6 months in Federal Prison because I climbed a fence. Five months earlier 8 peacemakers committed what was to become the first of many “Plowshares” actions, a nonviolent attempt to “beat [nuclear] swords into plowshares”. The where and why of the story explains the consequence.

After the end of American involvement in Vietnam ended with the fall of Saigon [later renamed Ho Chi Minh City] in 1975, Phil Berrigan and Liz Macalister turned their peacemaking focus toward nuclear weapons. As part of the Bible Study group they facilitated at the Community for Creative Nonviolence in Washington, DC in 1974-75, I was inspired and challenged to consider nonviolent direct action in my own peacemaking efforts. We carried full-scale models of “Little Boy” and “Fat Man”, the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945, to the steps of the US Capitol to mark the week of the 30th anniversary of those war crimes. Shortly after that, I moved to southwestern Georgia to join an intentional Christian community outside Americus called Koinonia Partners.

The genesis for the prayer witness at Pantex began for me with a conversation with Ladon Sheats in Washington, DC in September of 1980. I had just participated in a week-long group of peace actions at the Pentagon as part of Jonah House’s call for “The Year of the Election”. Peacemakers were urged to “take their vote to the Pentagon” for a week of actions since neither President Jimmy Carter nor Republican nominee Ronald Reagan were advocating movement toward disarmament or peaceful solutions to the world problems confronting us. Ladon Sheats was a former Resident Partner and Director of Koinonia Partners, living at the that Christian community from 1968-1975. From there, he joined the Jonah House Community in Baltimore and remained active in a life of resistance to the power of the war machine until his death in August of 2002.

Ladon discussed with several friends and me the possibility of conducting a prayer vigil at the heart of the nuclear weapons empire - the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, TX, the final assembly point for all nuclear weapons produced by the US government. He envisioned a small group of committed Christians who would travel to Texas, meet to pray and reflect for several days, and then attempt to enter the plant to pray in or around the buildings where the bombs were assembled. Participants would covenant together ahead of time to be committed to nonviolence and the group would agree not to notify the press ahead of time nor to cooperate with providing any defense of our action other than to state clearly why we were there. We would not defend ourselves with legal arguments but only statements about our faith and convictions.

When I returned to south Georgia and my community at Koinonia, I first discussed the proposed witness with my wife, Christine, and then with a smaller group of Partners who were committed to nonviolent direct action. As we were discerning my participation, we received word of the first Plowshares witness at King of Prussia, PA. While in support of that creative witness, it was clear that our planned witness would not involve any attempts to disarm or damage weapons we might encounter but rely solely on the power of prayer. As I continued in the discernment process, I had conversations with my parents and my wife’s parents. It was a very difficult time as my father-in-law, Benton Haas, was dying of leukemia and my wife spent most of her fall helping to care for him at his home in western Pennsylvania. While neither set of parents was enthusiastic about this proposed witness, I tried to communicate to them my sense of “call” to take this action of faith and witness.

In early February 1981, the Koinonia Resident Partners had a time of prayer during our weekly Partner’s meeting as a blessing and send-off. My wife, Christine, and Gail and Edwin Steiner and I drove the 20 + hours to Amarillo, Texas where we gathered with about a dozen others for a time of reflection, prayer, and sharing before the witness at the plant. The times of Bible study and prayer were very uplifting, helping to calm some of my fears and anxieties. Especially difficult was taking the time to write letters to my parents and to our community in the event we did not return. We tried to face the fact that this facility was one of the most heavily guarded facilities in the nation and that the guards confronting us would be armed with deadly weapons. Facing one’s own death and still choosing to act is the most liberating feeling in the world!

Yet not all the preparations were so serious. We had a “trial-run” of the two ladders we built to scale the 12’ chain link fence topped with barbed wire that we would encounter. When we set it up to scale a local baseball field backstop, the ladder collapsed under our weight and had to be rebuilt with heavier wood. We ended up in a heap, laughing at ourselves and the “folly” of our witness.

On the morning of Feb. 10, 1981, the six of us who covenanted together for this witness drove to the Pantex Plant to arrive in conjunction with the morning employee traffic, hopefully to allow us to get close to the area protected by 2 rows of chain link fence, separated by a 50’ “no man’s land” area between them. The radio station announced that visibility was “almost zero” as the blowing snow made it almost impossible for us to be seen as we briskly walked toward the fences with our two ladders.

After the first 3 scaled the fence and I threw their ladder over it so we could scale the second fence, all types of bells and whistles and lights were activated by sensory mines placed in the inner area between the fences. After all of us were inside the first fence, we noted that the second fence was electrified and security personnel had their automatic rifles pointed at us. We decided that it was as far as we were meant to go and so we gathered in a circle, read the passage from Ephesians about bringing light into darkness, and prayed for forgiveness for our complicity and trust in these weapons which threatened all of creation.

It took about 45 minutes for the security personnel to bring a van inside the fences to arrest us. Then they took us to the heart of that area of the plant (where we hoped to go anyway to pray) to question and process us. The Manager of the plant asked to meet with a couple of us to inquire why we were there. In the ensuing conversation, we discovered he was Jewish and one of us asked him how he would have felt if a group of people had sat on the railroad tracks leading into Auschwitz, challenging the Nazi plans for extermination. While he didn’t agree with our actions, he said he could understand [somewhat] our motivations.

After transfer to the local county jail, Federal Agents then transferred us again to the FBI building in Amarillo. After being questioned [and threatened] by the FBI, we were then taken to the Potter County Jail, our new home for the next 3 months. The two women in our group, Kathy Jennings and Mary Sprunger-Froese were sent to the women’s facility. Ladon, Father Larry Rosebaugh, Vince Scotti Eirene, and I were sent to maximum security in the men’s jail. After one week, Ladon and Larry were transferred to the minimum-security facility while Vince and I remained in the maximum lock-up. Vince and I only saw the other 4 when we went to court for arraignment, then our one-day trial, and then our sentencing. We also convinced two court-appointed lawyers assigned to our case to schedule two “pre-trial meetings” so we were able to see each other for a couple of hours before our trial.

Just before our trial began, the lawyers notified us that the US Attorney had filed several “Motions in Limine” aimed at preventing us from testifying about certain “irrelevant” issues. They asked the Court to disallow any testimony about “nuclear weapons or nuclear energy, US foreign policy, or our religious convictions” because they were not relevant to a simple criminal trespass charge we faced. This being only my second trial, I was nervous, wondering if the Judge would charge me with contempt if I attempted to talk about my motivation for our act of witness. Federal Judge Mary Lou Robinson had stopped both Ladon and Fr. Larry in the middle of their testimony stating that they could not testify about growing up in west Texas (Ladon) or his work on the streets of Recife, Brazil (Fr. Larry). While they were not charged with contempt, it was clear she had little patience with the prospect that the jury would hear any of this “irrelevant” testimony.

30 years later, I don’t remember what I said on the stand that day. I do remember talking about my faith and belief that Jesus called me to a life of nonviolence and that I had gone over that fence “to pray for peace”. I expected to be cut-off by the Judge at any minute but my testimony was short and to the point. The judge’s instructions to the jury left no doubt in my mind that our conviction was a forgone conclusion. She instructed the jury to disregard everything the defendants had said since our “motivation” was not important – only our intent: did we intend to enter the property and did we have permission to do so? It was all so neat and antiseptic. No need to “confuse” the jurors with complicated notions such as International Law and indiscriminate weapons. Did they trespass? If so, find them guilty. They did their duty and 45 minutes later returned to the Courtroom with their six guilty verdicts, one for each of us. Judge Robinson thanked them and announced she would sentence us in several weeks after court officers had a chance to research our prior records and come up with their recommendations.

Because of our decision to refuse to give our Social Security numbers or other irrelevant information at the time of booking, neither Vince nor I were permitted any visits in the Potter County Jail for the three months we were incarcerated there. But that decision, coupled with the incompetence of federal bureaucrats who failed to find prior arrest records for Vince and me, even though they had our names, addresses, fingerprints, and photos, that led us to be sentenced as “first-time offenders” and only get 6 month sentences, half the maximum allowed. Kathy and Mary, who had previously been arrested at Rocky Flats, another Department of Energy facility in Colorado that made the triggers for nuclear weapons, got 9 months. Ladon and Fr. Larry both were given the maximum one-year in prison because of their prior acts of conscience that led to convictions.

Several more weeks after sentencing, we were transferred to the Federal Prison in El Reno, OK to finish our sentences in federal prison. Federal Prison guidelines called for us to be sent to low-security prisons close to our homes because we had been convicted of nonviolent offences with relatively short sentences. However, since the prison camps at Maxwell Air Base in Alabama and at Eglin Air Base in Florida both had nuclear weapons located there, the prison authorities decided to ship me to Texarkana, TX for the remained of my 6 months. When I arrived, the minimum-security camp was not yet opened so I was housed in the “big house” (a medium security, level 3 prison) for several weeks until the camp opened. I finally was able to get a visit from my wife, Christine, over the Memorial Day weekend, after she had a grueling 20+-hour bus ride to see me.

In early August, nearly 6 months later, I was given a new set of clothes, about $25 and a bus ticket to Americus, GA and released, just two months shy of my 31st birthday.

Reflection on the past

Before we were transferred to federal prison, we heard a rumor about a Pantex worker quitting his job for reasons of conscience. We also learned that the local Roman Catholic Bishop, Leroy Matthiesen, visited Larry in his Amarillo cell and then later called for all persons of conscience to quit their jobs at Pantex and started a transition fund for workers who quit for reasons of conscience.

If we had strategized about how to get religious leaders to denounce nuclear weapons or had concocted a scheme to get the Roman Catholic Bishop to make a public statement about the morality of Pantex, we wouldn’t have come up with what we did. In retrospect, I feel that God used the faithfulness of our witness to help move the conscience and courage of the Bishop. And while the Bishop’s statement caused a shock wave throughout the Amarillo community, in the long run I believe the witness had more of an affect on me than on others.

What I took from the Prayer Witness At Pantex was the conviction that when we choose to act on our faith rather than our fears, our faith increases. Clarence Jordan, co-founder of the Koinonia community used to say, “Faith is acting not in spite of the evidence but in scorn of the consequences” and “faith is betting your life on the unseen realities”. When we chose to place our lives into the hands of God’s grace over against the fear of the weapons of the Pantex security guards, it was a statement of faith and hope rather than a resignation to despair in the presence of “The Bomb”.

The time in jail and prison was grace-filled. There were moments when I was scared; times when I was “concerned”; a lot of the time was filled with boredom, loud noises, and way too much cigarette smoke from fellow inmates. I learned to sleep with a towel over my eyes since the 100-watt light bulb in our 6-person, 8’ x 14’ cell was on 24/7. I read through my Bible twice. Wrote scores of letters, one every day to my wife while in the county jail, less frequently when I hit the federal prison. Listened to the stories of my cellmates and grew to understand the powerlessness that an inmate experiences. Having survived it, I feel I am stronger for it. I had a vibrant, loving community praying and supporting me that goes a long way when one is locked up!

It gave me a new appreciation for what it can mean to be on the “receiving end” of the American Empire. Those nuclear weapons, protected by the barbed-wire-topped fences and the plant security guards, are metaphors for the length to which our nation is willing to go to “protect our way of life”. As such, they are idols to our god of National Security, Mars, the god of war, and Mammon, the god of greed. February 10, 1981 was a day to reject those idols, those false gods; the rest of my life is one of nonviolent resistance to them while at the same time an embracing the alternative reality my faith calls me to: what Jesus referred to as the Kingdom or Reign of God. I am thankful to have friends who continue on this journey with me.

It Doesn't Matter If You Should Jail Us

(photos by Bill Cordaro; National Catholic Reporter staff)

“It Doesn’t Matter If You Should Jail Us” by Steve Clemens. August 16, 2010

14 of us stood in front of the huge Caterpillar dump truck with our hands outstretched, holding on to one another as we sang, prayed, and read our statement on why we were protesting the building of the first nuclear bomb plant to be constructed in 32 years on the south side of Kansas City, MO.

We sang the South African freedom song: “It doesn’t matter if you shall jail us, we are freed and kept alive by hope …”. We talked with Janice, the dump truck driver after she read a copy of our statement. Neither she nor the nearby bulldozer driver knew that what they were working on was to clear a site for a nuclear weapons plant. She was also unaware of the toxic waste that pollutes the present Kansas City Plant now operated by Honeywell that makes 85% of the non-nuclear components for the US nuclear bomb arsenal.

I hadn’t planned to risk arrest as I traveled down I-35 through Iowa to Kansas City last weekend but what I heard from the locals convinced me that I needed to act as well as speak against this crime. After hearing two retired workers tell about their friends dying of cancers and other diseases after working at the Bendix (and now run by Honeywell) Plant, I was stunned to learn that it was only recently that the EPA was forced to list the site as a source of major toxic pollution. Yet a day-care center remains on the grounds that sit atop this toxic mess. It looks like the federal government (and Honeywell) will walk away from this site once the new plant is built, leaving the local taxpayers stiffed for the clean-up bill.

Speaking of taxpayers, the city government of Kansas City decided to use funds earmarked for urban blight remediation to purchase the soybean fields and trees on the southern edge of the city for this plant with the promise to turn it over to private owners for $10 after 20 years- all under the cynical guise of protecting about 2,000+ jobs.

Presbyterian pastor and local Catholic Worker member (yes, one in the same), Eric Garbison spoke in a loud voice over the dim of the construction equipment this morning to the construction supervisors and the police who had come to arrest us: “I’m a pastor who lives in Northeast Kansas City at 12^th and Buford. I heard 4 gunshots last night. There are crack houses and abandoned houses in my neighborhood. The homeless come to our house for food and showers – yet the city government took funds for blighted neighborhoods and use it for this”, as he pointed to the vast expanse of bulldozed land in front and behind us.

“I went to the city council meetings two years ago to try to stop this plant. That is why I’m standing here today, risking arrest, to stay we cannot use this money to build weapons of death.” He, Brian Terrell, and Steve Jacobs had just returned to our group after walking over to two other large construction machines, a power shovel and a bulldozer, to try to talk with those equipment operators while the rest of us tried to engage the dump truck driver we had stopped with our bodies in front of her huge machine.

Garbison told the JE Dunn Construction supervisors and the police, “We want people to have jobs. They could take all of this equipment over to the old Honeywell bomb plant on Bannister and begin to clean that site up.” He went on to inform them that a day-care center remains on that deadly polluted site and asked them if they’d want to have their children to be cared for there. As a father himself, he didn’t want any children exposed to the beryllium, arsenic, and other deadly chemicals being used to make these nuclear weapons.

It is beyond ironic, in fact numbingly stupefying, that our nation can decry Iran’s attempt to enrich uranium for a potential bomb while we continue to modernize our illegal nuclear weapons and extend the life of present bombs for another 40-60 years – all at a time when our President claims a goal of zero nuclear weapons, beginning with the New START Treaty.

Half of the 14 arrested came from outside of the KC metro area: from Des Moines and Malloy in Iowa, from Tuscon, AZ, Columbia, MO and Minneapolis. The other 7 were from Kansas City, primarily from two Catholic Worker communities that live and serve among the poor and marginalized. They see a direct connection between the neglect of human needs and the obscenity of dumping billions into the troughs of arms merchants. Committed to a faith-based nonviolence, these activists chose to risk time in jail rather than to allow this plant to proceed without protest.

Catholic Worker troubadour Steve Jacobs from the St. Francis Catholic Worker in Columbia, MO sang his version of a Bob Dylan classic, changing the title and words to say “I ain’t gonna work on Uncle Sammy’s nuke plant no more. I ain’t gonna work in Kansas City’s nuke plant no more …”

The developer, Jim Cross, pleaded with us to walk away from his earth-moving equipment so his workers could resume, promising us “cold drinks and a place to sit and talk in the shade”. “I don’t want to have you arrested”, he claimed as he returned three times asking us to leave before the police put us in handcuffs and drove us downtown. We were booked on trespass charges and released with a court date on October 7.

__________

Statement carried by the 14 and given to workers:

Statement of Resistance to Nuclear Weapons Production in Kansas City, Mo., Aug. 16

We are gathered today, August 16, 2010, at the site of the future nuclear weapons production plant in Kansas City, Missouri, to protest the continued manufacture of U.S. nuclear weapons.

We also denounce the existence of the current Kansas City facility, where 85% of the non-nuclear components for the U.S. nuclear arsenal are produced, and demand its closure and clean-up.

The current plant and the future plant threaten the health and well-being of workers, our environment and the Kansas City community. The new plant is the recipient of funding by the city government through the explicit misdirection of funds intended for the improvement of urban blight.

The 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons and adherence to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law. Further, ratified treaties are enshrined by the U.S. Constitution as supreme laws of the land. Building the first new U.S. nuclear weapons production facility in 32 years is in obvious violation of these laws.

The cardinal rules and principles of humanitarian law require that civilians never be the object of attack and prohibit weapons that are incapable of distinguishing between civilians and military targets.

The International Court of Justice found that the destructive power of nuclear weapons cannot be contained in either space or time, and nuclear weapons have the potential to destroy all civilization and the entire ecosystem of the planet, and thus are illegal. In keeping with the Nuremburg Principles, we choose to act nonviolently rather than be complicit.

The intended use of the new Kansas City Plant is to improve and extend the life of nuclear weapons. Any complicity in planning, preparation, threatening to use or use of these weapons is a crime against peace, war crime and crime against humanity.

Under principles of democracy we exercise the right of every citizen of this republic and this planet to peacefully resist the nuclear threat that attacks every core concept of human rights.

We act to exercise our basic rights to life and freedom from violence and we exercise our duty to protect children and future generations.

We act to ensure that our government fulfills its promise and responsibilities to unequivocally pursue and achieve nuclear disarmament in good faith.

We call on national, state and local Kansas City government to end the use of our tax dollars to wage permanent war and demand clean-up of all chemical and radioactive contamination.

---

Open Letter to Attorney General Eric Holder

July 28, 2010

Attorney General Eric Holder

US Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW

Washington, DC 20530-0001

RE: US Attorney in Eastern Tennessee District

Dear Mr. Holder,

Let me begin by saying “thank you” for challenging the recent Arizona law seeking to intimidate immigrants. This is the kind of leadership I hoped for with President Obama’s election and your subsequent appointment.

However, the subject of this letter is less optimistic. I write to you as a nonviolent activist with a long history of nonviolent protest against war and weapons, the death penalty and present prison policy, and other justice issues. As a result, I have found myself as a defendant or supporter in a number of courtrooms since my first arrest at the White House during the last major demonstration against the Vietnam War in March of 1975, mentored that day by Daniel Berrigan, Jim Peck, Dick Gregory, Liz Macalister, Ladon Sheats, and others.

While I always enter the courtroom with the hope that somehow truth and justice might prevail, I have seldom left feeling optimistic. A few times when juries have been allowed to consider International Law and Treaties, I have been acquitted. Most of the time, however, I see the courtroom as a place to continue my witness for nonviolence, truth, and justice despite the outcome. I consider it an honor to have been a prisoner for reasons of conscience several times over the past 35 years.

So my recent experience in Knoxville on July 6, 2010 shouldn’t have shocked me - but it did. Please allow me to set the stage for you. Along with 200 + others, I attended a Conference for a Nuclear Free Future at Maryville College over the 4^th of July weekend which concluded with a nonviolent protest at the entrance to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant (now called the Y-12 National Security Complex since the 9-11 attacks in an attempt to further obscure the dirty secret of our continued production/modernization of nuclear weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) on Monday morning, July 5^th under the banner reading “Independence from Nuclear Terrorism”. 23 of us chose to peaceably block the state road entrance to the facility with the banner (the road had already been blocked by Oak Ridge Plant security) and were arrested and charged with “obstruction of roadway”. That, being a state/local matter, is not the focus of this letter.

13 others, with two in their 40s and most in their late 60s, 70s, and 80s, chose to risk Federal Trespass charges by ducking under a barbed wire fence and then sitting in a circle singing, praying, and sharing poetry prior to their arrest. Most anticipated spending the night in jail although with at least three of the arrestees in their 80s, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they would have been cited and released with a court date. All were jailed overnight.

The following afternoon, many of us crowded into the Howard Baker Federal Courthouse in Knoxville to witness the first appearance of our friends under these Federal charges. They all knew of the possibility of up to 1 year in prison for their act of conscience but it was still shocking to me to see 83 year old Jean Gump, 82 year old Brad Lyttle, and 73 year old nun, Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch enter the courtroom with leg irons and hand cuffs attached to waist chains. This for a nonviolent protest offense! (I’ve written at greater length about this in my blog (http://mennonista.blogspot.com/2010/07/obscenity-in-courtroom.html ).

After overcoming the shock and disappointment that these defendants weren’t even released from these ridiculous shackles during this entire court appearance (for which I hold both your US Attorney, the US Marshalls, and the Federal Judge accountable) I was further taken aback when the Judge asked your Assistant US Attorney to read the charges and legal consequences for the offense. (I’m sorry I did not hear her name. She is a blond-haired woman in her 30s.) I almost fell out of my bench in the back of the courtroom when she replied that the defendants not only faced “up to one year in prison with supervisory release of not more than a year and a $100. assessment” but they were also subject to “a fine of up to $100,000.”

That’s correct. I didn’t accidently add a couple of zeroes. One hundred thousand dollars! For a nonviolent offence! For people of conscience intent on peaceably demanding that our nation live up to International Laws and Treaties (and the ruling of the International Court) which clearly identify nuclear weapons as illegal. For such an absurd (and obscene) penalty – even if only threatened and never meant to be carried out – I hold both you and the President to account. Those Assistant US Attorneys are acting under your jurisdiction and supervision.

Neither you nor President Obama can pretend to take the high road by lofty speeches calling for the abolishment of nuclear weapons like he did early in his term in Prague or more recently with the signing of the New START Treaty while at the same time threatening and intimidating men and women of conscience who should be your allies in this struggle for a world with fewer threats of annihilation.

Setting aside the “criminal trespass” offense itself, do you really wish to convey a message with such outrageous threats of hundred-thousand-dollar-fines for nonviolent protest? Have you learned nothing from the legacy of Rosa Parks and Martin King, from Susan B. Anthony and Cesar Chavez, from Dorothy Day and AJ Muste? (The list, as you well know, could go on and on. … ) President Kennedy presciently said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”

Frankly, I expected such reckless and calloused threats and charges from some of your predecessors like Ashcroft and Gonzales, John Mitchell and Dick Kleindienst. But from Eric Holder and Barack Obama? Surely we can hope for real change – but so far, it hasn’t been too much in evidence.

Please, Mr. Attorney General, use your position and office to help our nation realize and appreciate the valued contribution that civil disobedience has played in our history and instruct your US Attorneys to adjust “punishment” to “fit the crime”.

(Still) Hopefully and Respectfully yours,

Steve Clemens

2912 E. 24^th St.

Minneapolis, MN 55406-1322

steveclemens@gmail.com

[Another] Miscarriage of Justice

[Another] Miscarriage of Justice by Steve Clemens. July 10, 2010

Oak Ridge, TN is the site for the Y-12 Nuclear Bomb Plant, renamed “Y-12 National Security Complex” after the attacks in NYC and Washington, DC on 9/11/2001 – a day that led to hysterical power grabs and a multitude of retrenchments on civil and human rights around our nation. It is an appropriate target for political and moral dissent due to its continued role in producing a new generation of nuclear weapons.

OREPA, the Oak Ridge Environmental and Peace Alliance, has held a weekly Sunday vigil by the entrance to the large facility for several years. Committed to active nonviolence, the group has occasionally encouraged activists to engage in conscientious civil disobedience in opposition to the continued role Y-12 has in threatening the rest of the world with nuclear death and destruction while squandering financial and scientific resources which are desperately needed to address needs in our own local communities.

A pernicious combination of hatred and fear of government, especially on the federal level but now creeping ever and ever closer to local governmental expressions as well has been growing ever since President Reagan opined in his grandfatherly way that “government IS the problem” [rather than the solution]. “Tea Party” members are merely a louder, more visible manifestation of this philosophy.

“Philosophy’ is maybe too strong a word since it implies a well thought out position rather than a knee-jerk reaction. But one constant theme of these reactionaries is to “cut taxes” – to “starve the beast”, to downsize the government so it is small enough to “drown it in a bathtub”. [However, most notably, at the same time increase the military budget (which has less and less to do with “defense” and more and more to do with projecting empire/domination over others) and local police forces and private “security” outfits like Xe (formerly Blackwater), Wackenhut, and other mercenary types.]

This downsizing, coupled with a persistent economic recession, had led to a crisis in many areas of both federal and local governments. Although the federal entities can run a deficit and borrow from our grandchildren to pay the debt later, state and local governments are forced to balance their budgets and often find novel means to accomplish it. It is particularly evident in the criminal justice system.

How does this manifest itself in Oak Ridge, TN? For one, Anderson County now charges inmates (often those with the least ability to pay) $50/day for their use of the jail while incarcerated. To add insult to injury, the jail is grossly over-crowded with about 1/3 of the inmates sleeping on the floor, some even without a mattress, at any given time. Maybe the motto “crime doesn’t pay” needs to be adjusted if it comes to mean that one needs to subsidize ones own captors. (I think the term for that used to be “being held for ransom” or kidnapping; now it is fiscal solvency). But apparently (as I discovered last week), the “per-diem fee” doesn’t accrue until after one is sentenced – pre-trial time is courtesy of the taxpayer.

But getting to sentencing and thus contributing to ones own “room and board” expense comes also with other charges. When activists are arrested for “obstruction of a highway” for blocking the entrance, nonviolently, of the Y-12 facility (which had already been blocked by the Wackenhut security so no vehicular traffic could enter while the demonstration was taking place so the protest is primarily symbolic), the normal sentence for a first offense has been a fine of up to $50, the legal limit set by the State of Tennessee. However, coupled with the fine are “court costs” now in the range of $240 – much more if one seeks ones constitutional right to a jury trial. So even if a principled civil disobedient agrees to expedite the case with a guilty or no contest plea, taking up very little of the court’s time, the disproportionate court costs are levied.

If the true penalty for obstruction of a highway should be a fine of up to $50 (along with up to 30 days in jail for truly criminal offenses), then there should be a mechanism where one could take responsibility, pay the fine, and avoid taking up the time in the court system. However, we were told no such option exists. We were given the ultimatum of staying in an illegally overcrowded jail for 8 days before seeing a judge and being told to pay a $50 fine (and court costs) as first-offenders of this law or returning to court after release from custody-upon-arrest and booking 8 days later only to be socked with court costs of $240 and the fine. So, no credit is given for one’s 8 days in the Anderson County Jail.

One of the purposes of civil disobedience has been to create an [artificial] crisis in the judicial system in order to draw attention to the injustice they wish to address. What happens when court costs become punitive is essentially a tax on one’s conscience. One remembers President Kennedy’s warning: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable.” Fortunately for Anderson County officials, those arrested at the “Declaration of Independence From Nuclear Weapons at Y-12” event are committed to nonviolence. But the growing divide in the US between the haves and have-nots is increasing at an alarming rate and the more desperate a people becomes, the greater the variety of responses they may choose.

The Bomb (and its protection by the judicial system) does not make us more secure – it breeds fear (occasionally) but mostly contempt and consternation from the world community. The blatant hypocrisy evidenced in our crusade (yes, that is a deliberate choice of word) against Iran for trying to get what we already possess in spades is mostly ignored by Americans because of their acceptance of the doctrine of American exceptionalism.

The fact that any President is held hostage by militarists in both political parties makes “change we can believe in” very unlikely in this area. We are captivated by (and captive to) the Bomb. Back in the 1980s, some religious leaders used the term idolatry to describe the relationship between Americans and “national security”. Since 9-11, many of those voices have been stilled or grown weak – precisely at a time when they are most needed.

I suspect we will have to decide if filling the jails to create a crisis (or expose the conflict that has been below the surface for decades) is the way to go. We could be at an historic turning point – or once again, by our inaction, we may fail to act in a timely fashion.

An Obscenity in the Courtroom

An Obscenity In The Courtroom by Steve Clemens. July 7, 2010

I spent most of Tuesday afternoon sitting in Courtroom 3A of the Federal Courthouse of the Eastern District of Tennessee as my friends were hauled before Judge H. Price Guyton. The Courtroom was packed with supporters of the 13 defendants who had been arrested the previous day protesting at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant.

We stood out of love and respect as three women shuffled into the room, shackled at the feet, waist, and hands. If not so absurd for their clearly nonviolent offense, it would have been comical as the Clerk asked them to raise their right hands to “swear or affirm that you will tell the truth” – they could only raise their right arm a few inches due to the waist chain’s attachment to the handcuffs.

Jean Gump, an 83 year-old mother of 12, Sister Mary Dennis Lentsch, a 73 year-old nun who teaches basic literacy skills to economically challenged Appalachian residents, and Brad Lyttle, 82, an activist for peace, disarmament, and civil rights who was part of the 1961 San Francisco to Moscow Peace Walk, the first integrated disarmament walk from Nashville to Washington, DC in 1962, and the Canada to Cuba Peace Walk in 1963, were the first defendants brought before the Federal Judge on criminal trespass charges after having spent the previous 27 hours in jail.

After they were sworn in, the Judge asked the Assistant US Attorney to read the charges of unlawfully entering the property (the defendants had crawled between strands of barbed wire fencing, placed origami peace cranes on some solar collectors, and then circled up to sing and read their “Declaration of Independence From Nuclear Weapons” before being arrested).

The Judge then asked the Prosecutor to read the possible consequences for this misdemeanor trespass charge. The US Attorney read it so fast and quietly that the Judge had to ask her to speak slower and into the microphone so the defendants could understand it. With a straight face she read that those charged with this nonviolent offense could face a sentence of “not more than one year in prison, a fine of up to $100,000, with supervisory release of not more than one year, and an additional assessment of $100.”

The Judge did not blink. He did not blush. He didn’t stand up and “rent his clothes” as the Biblical prophets of the Hebrew Bible did when they heard such an obscene perversion of justice. It was as if the possible fine was a day’s wages rather than this preposterous amount for defendants who not only were nonviolently asserting their rights of dissent and redress of grievances against an unresponsive government on the 4^th of July holiday but also all qualified for court appointed attorneys because of their very modest incomes!

I wanted to get out of my seat and scream and holler but this time was for these friends of conscience and I didn’t want to take away attention from their first court appearance for these brave and compassionate citizens. To even suggest that any consideration of a $100,000 fine should be made is an obscenity – something degrading to humans. The President makes public pronouncements about our need to eliminate nuclear weapons and then allows his Justice Department representatives to blithely and unembarassingly claim that this outrageous fine could be an outcome of this case.

Sister Carol Gilbert, 63, and Sister Ardeth Platte, 74, both of Baltimore’s Jonah House Community, Sister Jackie Hudson, 75, of the Ground Zero Community of Pulsbo, WA, and Fr. Bill Bixel, 82, also from Washington state were also defendants later in the afternoon. Norfolk Catholic Worker Steve Baggerly was the youngest defendant at age 45. Most of the defendants have many acts of conscience on their records. Bonnie Urfer, one of the weekend conference organizers from Nukewatch was one of the last defendants to be released under a conditional personal recognizance bond after a long afternoon. The trial date will be set in the coming months. The US Attorney wanted to place a condition that 83 year-old Jean Gump look for gainful employment during this release period before trial but the Judge removed that condition after her court-appointed attorney objected.

When the Judge asked Sister Ardeth Platte if she was satisfied with her court-appointed attorney, she replied, “Well, having just met him, I don’t know if he knows anything about International Law, the [US] Constitution, and Treaties signed by our government. And I don’t know if you are aware of them either”, disclosing her likely defense which cites Article 6 of the US Constitution. That provision states that Treaties signed by our government are “the supreme law of the land”.

The defendants held themselves with calm and dignity despite the outrageous behavior of governmental officials. We must abolish nuclear weapons before they abolish us and all of God’s creation.

Busted in Front of Nuke Weapons Plant

Two Minnesotans Arrested For Declaring Independence by Steve Clemens. July 5, 2010

37 anti-nuclear activists were arrested this morning at the entrance to the Y-12 Nuclear Weapons Plant outside Oak Ridge, TN as part of a group under the statement “Declaration of Independence from Nuclear Weapons at Y-12”. Twenty-three people were arrested for blocking the highway entrance to the plant with a banner inscribed with “Independence From Nuclear Terrorism” while 14 others went under the barbed wire fence and nonviolently entered the property. The former group faces state “obstruction of highway” charges, a misdemeanor; the latter group faces federal trespass charges. This more serious charge can result in up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $1,000.

The group arrested included Steve Clemens from Minneapolis and Pepperwolf from Red Wing. Both are members of the local AlliantACTION group which protests radioactive weapons made by Minnesota’s largest war profiteer, Alliant Techsystems in Eden Prairie at a weekly vigil. They attended a weekend conference held in eastern Tennessee along with three others from the Twin Cities area. The conference, “Resistance for a Nuclear Free Future” was scheduled to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Nukewatch, The Nuclear Resister, and the Plowshares 8, the first act of nuclear disarmament by activists at the GE weapons facility in King of Prussia, PA.

Four of the original Plowshares 8 members were present as was the widow of a fifth. They were joined by close to two dozen other Plowshares activists, one of who has served over 18 years in prison for his nonviolent resistance to the bomb. Over two hundred attended the event held at Maryville College, about 25 miles from Oak Ridge, the site of the enrichment of the uranium for the first atomic bomb dropped by the US on Hiroshima, Japan in August 1945.

But the Y-12 Plant, renamed the “Y-12 National Security Complex” after the September 11^th attacks, is not just an historical landmark – it remains as a central cog in the nuclear weapons machinery today. OREPA, the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, is one of several groups organized in opposition to our present nuclear policy. They informed the conference about the misnamed “Life Extension Program” under which the Y-12 plant is refurbishing all US nuclear weapons so that they can continue to threaten others for another 100-120 years. Under the guise of “modernization”, they are part of a plan to build a whole new generation of nuclear weapons with greater accuracy – now to hit unknown targets with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the excuse used in the past to justify the trillions spent since the 1940s.

The arrested activists carried with them “A Declaration of Independence from Nuclear Weapons at Y-12”. Stating “… Current Law requires an end to all planning, preparation, production, threat, or use of nuclear weapons and adherence to the fundamental rules and principles of Humanitarian Law”, the declaration described the illegal nuclear weapons designed at the Y-12 plant and claimed that “… we exercise our duty to protect children and future generations.”

Ironically, the new START Treaty President Obama is pursuing is being coupled with a promise to spend billion of tax dollars to build newer nuclear weapons to replace some of those being dismantled by the Treaty in order to secure Republican votes in the Senate for it. In fact, Obama’s 2011 budget calls for an increase of 14% for the NNSA nuclear weapons program, the largest increase for any federal agency while at the same time calling for zero increase in education and the environment. As one conference speaker said, “follow the money. Bob Dylan once said, ‘Money doesn’t talk – it swears!’”

Despite the seriousness of the conference topic, there was much laughter and celebration. Guy and Candie Carawan, folk singing troubadours from the bygone labor and civil rights struggles traveled from nearby Highlander Center to lead the conference in songs; several anti-nuclear activists from Australia led a contingent of clowns which greatly enlivened the resistance arrests. Puppetistas and skits both informed and entertained. It was a celebration of continued nonviolent resistance to both nuclear power generation as well as nuclear weapons over the past three decades.

Many of those gathered had been “jailed for justice”, many meeting one another behind jail bars over the years. There were many joyful reunions from people scattered all over the country. Two of the veteran leaders of the movement told jokes or funny stories from their numerous protest actions. A priest in his 70s wept as he listened to a sister arrestee talk about what their action together decades ago did to change her life and inspire her life-long commitment to peace with justice.

Although many Americans associate the “ban the bomb” movement with either the 1950s or the 1980s, a young peoples contingent calling themselves “Think Outside the Bomb” is stepping forth to join the veterans of the anti-nuclear movement. And as politicians look desperately for alternatives to the environmental and climate threats posed by fossil fuels (think of the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico and the recent coal mine disaster, not to mention mountain-top removal or threats to wilderness areas), many are jumping on a bandwagon under the illusive promise of nuclear power as a “clean energy”. Nevermind the fact that Wall Street refuses to finance new nuclear facilities, there is no feasible solution to either nuclear waste storage nor any viable plan BP deep water oil rig.

This conference and the act of resistance by the activists are timely reminders that we must be careful of our decisions and directions, choosing peaceful, sustainable technologies for future generations and ourselves. Many of my own personal heroes and mentors were there including Liz McAlister

, Kathy Kelly , and Frank Cordaro. And I met several peace legends for the first time including Brad Lyttle, a Freedom Rider and activist since the 50s , Sr. Anne Montgomery, also in her 80s and continuing to resist. It was a privelege to be arrested with them.