Paul Elie, writing for The New Yorker, provides an excellent overview of the Plowshares movement, and places the actions of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 within the context of not only this movement but the wider evolution of the Church’s thinking and teaching on nuclear weapons. Check it out!
November 20, 2019
Dear ___,Now is the time to write letters to Judge Lisa Godbey Wood regarding her sentencing of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7. We are collecting letters, especially from those who know the defendants, testifying to their character and the good work that they are doing in their communities which will not be done if they are serving long terms in prison. These letters are not the forum to criticize the law, the legal process or government policies. Rather it is the place to point out positive things about the defendants that should mitigate a harsh sentence.
Letters should be sent to defense attorney Bill Quigley at the address below. He will compile them and distribute to various defendants’ attorneys for delivery to Judge Wood. The attorneys suggest it would be helpful to get these done by Thanksgiving or the week after in order to get processed and delivered. Sentencing may be in January or possibly February.
The best letters are simple, polite, and tell good things about the person you are writing in support of.
The suggested format is as follows:DateSender’s NameSender’s AddressJudge Lisa Godbey Woodc/o Bill QuigleyLoyola University New Orleans Law ClinicCampus Box 9027214 St. Charles AvenueNew Orleans, LA 70118Regarding Sentencing of: Mark Colville [or] Clare Grady [or] Martha Hennessy [or] Fr. Steve Kelly SJ [or] Elizabeth McAlister [or] Patrick O’Neill [or] Carmen Trotta (or all seven of the Kings Bay Plowshares)Dear Judge Wood, Suggested outline for the letter: – Explain who you are. – Explain who you are writing about, how you know them, and what good they do for their community. – Explain why the Judge should not send them to jail. – Thank the Judge for reading your letter.Valediction,Signature
For more ideas and details for your letters, you are welcome to see the defendants’ biographies here.
Thank you for your attentiveness to the trial, your support for the defendants and their families, and your focus on the issue of the abolition of nuclear weapons.
As Fr. Steve Kelly says, “The nuclear weapons won’t go away by themselves.” We do this work together.
In solidarity,The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Support Team
Please Donate
Thanks to your support, we have mobilized thousands of people around the world to speak out for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Please help with expenses, housing, and supporting defendants’ families following the verdict and the upcoming sentencing.
EMAIL: Media: kbp7media@gmail.com
General: kingsbayplowshares@gmail.com
WEBSITE: www.kingsbayplowshares7.org
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/Kingsbayplowshares
TWITTER: https://www.twitter.com/kingsbayplow7
INSTAGRAM: https://instagram.com/kingsbayplowshares7
YOUTUBE: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkSCM4dxIJxAolsl2oMP72Q/
“Dear Mainstream News Media –
CounterPunch.org
I’m talking to you, New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN, and all your upstanding, highly professional conglomerate cohorts.
Thank you one and all very, very much for not covering the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7.”
Jeremy Scahill interviews Liz McAlister, one of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 and wife of the late Phil Berrigan, on The Intercept podcast titled “Omnicidal Tendencies.” You can listen here: https://theintercept.com/2019/10/23/omnicidal-tendencies-the-nuclear-presidency-of-donald-trump/
On a whim, I Googled Jeremy Scahill, whom I’ve admired for years, and it turns out he was raised by two Catholic activists and spent a year living at Jonah House, founded by Phil and Liz. Here is some more information on that:
“The Blackwater scandal of American (and other) mercenaries in Iraq and elsewhere popped up on my radar as yet another dark chapter in this national nightmare surrounding Iraq. Yet I didn’t explore it as much as I would have liked (or should have) until channel-surfing the other night I came across a Bill Moyers’ interview with Jeremy Scahill, author of an impressive book of investigative reporting on Blackwater. The interview and parsing of the media counter-attack by Blackwater CEO Erik Prince was illuminating, and chilling. And Scahill’s dedication, work and presentation were beyond impressive, to me.
Catholic antipodes
I was not aware, however, that Scahill and Prince are both Catholic, until last night I read an Oct 12 profile of Scahill in NCR. Scahill was raised in a Catholic Worker home, and went to live at Jonah House with the Berrigans in Baltimore for a year in the 1990’s.
It had a profound impact on me, he told NCR. I think that being alive in the times that we live in means to be a resister…For me, media is a nonviolent weapon in that struggle.”
By David Gibson
October 21, 2007
Commonweal
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/catholic-antipodes
Outside the courthouse for the first day of the trial of the Kings Bay Plowshares activists. We interviewed three of them on the podcast back in August: Martha Hennessy, Carmen Trotta and Clare Grady.
Below are some speeches they gave last night at the eve of the trial. Both of these videos have been taken from the Kings Bay Plowshares Facebook page and were posted by Steve Dear.
The Trial Date has been set for the Kings Bay Plowshares. If you are in Georgia, you might want to go support them! Don’t miss the interview we did with them on the podcast in August.
The following is an excerpt from James W. Douglass’s book “The Nonviolent Coming of God“:
“We have seen [the power of nonviolence] happen during the ‘Second Russian Revolution,’ August 19-20, 1991, in response to the attempted Soviet coup. The coup was overcome by hundreds of thousands of unarmed citizens. Some, as in resisters were martyred by the tanks. Hundreds, then thousands of other citizens encircled the Russian Parliament Building in Moscow as a civilian defense force shielding Boris Yeltsin and other elected leaders from an imminent military assault. All afternoon and evening on the second day of the coup, loudspeakers blared warnings to the people that tanks were rolling toward the building and planes filled with paratroopers were preparing for an airborne assault. Yet the people kept coming. In fact a further three-pronged assault was currently being mounted against them. It was to include K.G.B. agents who had infiltrated the crowd within the building, helicopters bearing shock troops, and elite units prepared to rush into the building from twenty-four subterranean entry points whose existence was unknown to Yeltsin supporters. A Tiananmen Square in Moscow was averted only by the moral force of the resistance and the noncooperation of soldiers who refused to murder their Russian brothers and sisters.
One exemplar of the moral force which prevailed over the coup was Father Aleksandr Boris, an Orthodox priest and member of the Moscow City Council. Father Boris prayed with the civilian defenders, baptized them for their nonviolent mission, then confronted their opponents in an equally prayerful way. He went from tank to tank, distributing 2,000 Bibles to the soldiers who were expected to assault the Parliament. Only one soldier refused a Bible. Father Borisov then gave another 2,000 Bibles to the people on the barricades. Finally he took part in a key meeting with Patriarch Alexis of the Russian Orthodox Church who then made a proclamation that any soldiers who fired on civilians would be excommunicated.
It was this moral force, embodied in the lives of thousands of willing martyrs (‘witnesses’) to the truth, which rendered the Soviet coup impotent.”
Don’t miss the latest podcasts.
Meet the Catholic activists involved in the Kings Bay Plowshare movement.
And I was delighted to have an interesting conversation with Fr. Brian McNavish about refugees, militarism, pacifism, Just War Theory, and more!
In three short months we’ve made it to 10 episodes! Thanks for listening and if you find the content compelling, please spread the word. You can also send suggestions for future guests to contact@catholicsagainstmilitarism.com.
