Statement of support for nonviolent nuclear resisters

To: Newark Peace Education Summit, May 13-15, 2011

Re: Support U.S. nonviolent nuclear resisters

We applaud and support the peaceful disarmament activists convicted this week in Federal Court in Knoxville, Tennessee, as well as those recently convicted and sentenced for the “Disarm Now: Trident Illegal and Immoral” action at the Kitsap-Bangor Trident submarine base in Washington. In addition we applaud and support the six preparing for a June federal trespass trial in Tacoma, Washington for a Martin Luther King Day demonstration at the Kitsap-Bangor Trident Base and the 53 arrested during a May 2 protest of the Kansa City H-bomb factory now under construction in Kansas City, Missouri. Disgracefully, all five elderly resisters from the Kitsap-Bangor Trident Base “Disarm Now” action are now in federal prison. One of those an 82 year old priest from Tacoma Washington was also one of the 12 convicted this week for trespass at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn. during an Independence Day action last year. Seven more of those convicted in Knoxville have also surrendered to federal prison pending sentencing of up to 1 year in prison and $100,000 fine.

We are appalled by the federal court orders issued in these cases that prohibit any defense evidence of the lethality and unlawfulness of nuclear weapons. US courts wrongfully presume legality of US nuclear weapons and fail to recognize any justification or necessity for peaceful resisters to enter nuclear weapons facilities such as the Kitsap-Bangor Trident Base or the Y12 site. This leads to cruel and unnecessary imprisonment and precludes good-faith discussion or implementation of nuclear disarmament. We understand that any use of nuclear weapons causes grotesque mass destruction and betrays our humanity. All nuclear weapons including the Trident system and the warheads built for it at Y12 and the Kansas City Plant are intended to inflict indiscriminate and uncontrollable massacres and, as such, violate the fundamental rules and principles of humanitarian law.

In the absence of any genuine intention by the United States government to undertake disarmament, we congratulate and celebrate those who respond to this nuclear terrorism with peaceful actions of civil resistance, including nonviolent disruption of the production or threatened use of hydrogen bombs anywhere.

For more information contact:

John La Forge, Nukewatch, nukewatch1@lakeland.ws
Anabel Dwyer, anabeldwyer@yahoo.com
Elizabeth McAlister, Jonah House, disarmnow@verizon.net
Leonard Eiger, Puget Sound Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (Coordinator), subversivepeacemaking@gmail.com

Editor's Note:  Click here for information about the Neward Peace Education Summit.