A Valentine’s Day Tribute: The Things They Do for Love
Americans are largely unaware of the vastness and lethality of U.S. nuclear weapons stockpiles, say Sisters Ardeth Platte, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson, the three nuns who did time in federal prison for breaking into the N-8 Minuteman missile site in October 2002.
Now that the sisters are all back from prison, they spent some time with me to explain how their religious commitment and civic duty led them to become activists for nuclear disarmament.
In 1978 after Sisters Ardeth and Carol first heard Helen Caldicott’s message on the dangers of nuclear weapons, they decided to work for the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign in Michigan, their home state. At the time, Michigan held the sixth largest cache of nuclear weapons in the country. The two sisters helped to organize a statewide ballot initiative for the Freeze in 1982, which passed at 56 percent.
They continued to work to free Michigan of all nuclear weapons until the Defense Closure and Realignment Commission (BRAC) inactivated the Wurtsmith Air Force Base near Oscoda in 1993 and the K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base near Marquette in 1995.
Continuing to feel the intensity of their call to eliminate nuclear weapons, Sisters Carol and Ardeth then joined Jonah House in Baltimore and became members of Plowshares. The worldwide peace organization spotlights the dangers of militarism and weapons of mass destruction through symbolic acts like their blood-spilling on the N-8 missile site.
Sister Jackie began her activism against nuclear weapons after being inspired by Sister Marjorie Tuite (1922-86) who talked about the “burden of knowledge” that doesn’t allow a person to know what’s going on in the world and not do anything about it. This burden calls for a “revolutionary integrity” that challenges one’s morality and calls for a continued commitment of the gospel’s message of “doing justice.”
“You can educate others and you can act,” said Sister Jackie, 73, who served 30 months at the Victorville Federal Prison Adelanto, Ca. “This is not always easy because there are consequences. However, when the consequences come, there is something that happens within that is deepened.”
Sister Jackie dedicated herself to the Ground Zero Center in Bremerton, Wash. near Seattle where she has lived since 1993. The center is located adjacent to the Trident submarine base where 2,000 nuclear warheads are stored. Peace activists regularly protest at the base and advocate its closing.
In 1996 the U.S. military stepped up its strategic capacity with Vision 2020, a plan to exploit and dominate outer space by linking all land, sea and air bases.
“Most people have no clue about Vision 2020,” said Sister Carol, 59, who spent 33 months at women’s prison at Alderson, W. Va. “Such a plan, if enacted, would lead to the utter devastation of the planet. So in 2000 we rang a bell saying that this was happening in our country and we must stop it.”
The sisters’ action against Vision 2020 occurred at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Co. where they poured their blood on a communications satellite and hammered a grounded fighter jet prior during an air show exhibit there. They did this because both presidential candidates that year had endorsed Vision 2020. The sisters were subsequently released without punishment.
“Nuclear weapons are the taproot of all violence,” said Sister Ardeth, 71, who served 41 months in the Danbury Federal Correction Institution in Connecticut. “Because we have these weapons of mass destruction and see ourselves as the remaining superpower nation, we proceed to intervene in other nations, claim other’s resources, and set up our military bases in their countries.”
She cited our war in Afghanistan, where we wanted to build an oil pipeline, and in Iraq, where we wanted their oil.
“The U.S. is obliged to abide by the non-proliferation treaty, to dismantle all of these weapons, in order to gain partnership with others and begin to work together,” said Sister Ardeth. “This is for our future survival, the survival of all people, of creation and the planet, herself.”
Sister Ardeth noted that since 1945 the United States has spent $20 trillion on military weapons. Meanwhile, millions of people in America and throughout the world are poor, sick and hungry because they lack even a fraction of such resources.
“When I learned about how poverty and racism work from the people who experience them, I saw that these things injure Mother Earth, too,” she said. “And I thank God in understanding the connection of all these violences. I thank God for the consciousness to say no to war and all violence.”
The sisters consider their action at the N-8 to be their citizen duty aimed at exposing the truth about weapons of mass destruction and the country’s unmitigated and bipartisan support for them.
They didn’t expect to go to prison nor did they think their sentences would be so severe, however, given heightened 9/11 security concerns, the prosecutor’s case against the nuns was probably used a deterrent to others who might want to plan future “symbolic” demonstrations.
Nevertheless, the sisters regard their prison time as “sacred time” not only because they “sacrificed” themselves for the cause of justice and nonviolence, but because their case received a lot more publicity than it might have. Their aim was to attract attention to the dangers of our country’s WMD as we were marching toward war over Iraq’s WMD.
The sisters recognize that not everyone can or is willing to go to prison as they did. As nuns they have the freedom to engage in public protest and to serve time in prison without disrupting family life.
“How could we not?” said Sister Carol without hesitation.
Actually, going to prison gave them the opportunity to “wash our hands of our complicity” with the military industrial complex.
Although the sisters’ religious status (and earning capacity) does not require them to pay income taxes, they do pay sales taxes on consumer goods and services. In other words, it is nearly impossible for them or any American citizen to avoid supporting the country’s war machine simply because everyone pays some kind of federal tax.
One might wonder if the sisters regard their effort and their prison time as worth it, especially as the Iraq War is nearing its fifth year and the president has been rattling sabers with Iran.
“We decided that our work is to end the war, to dismantle all WMDs, to stop all killing,” said Sister Ardeth. “At every Mass, in every prayer, we ask for this. It is programmed into us.”
“I don’t ever want a child to say that we did nothing,” said Sister Carol.
“I have a strong belief in life and love and lived to the best of my ability to practice those beliefs,” said Sister Jackie.
* * *
PLEASE NOTE: A new film titled “Conviction” by Brenda Truelson Fox of Boulder, CO, illustrates the sisters’ commitment to disarmament. Copies of the 43-minute film are available through Zero to Sixty Productions: www.ztsp.org.
Olga Bonfiglio teaches a peace class at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She is the author of Heroes of a Different Stripe: How One Town Responded to the War in Iraq and writes on the subjects of social justice and religion. Her website is www.OlgaBonfiglio.com. Contact her at olgabonfiglio@yahoo.com.
“I don’t ever want a child to say that we did nothing,” said Sister Carol.
Not to worry. After George W. Bush there will be No Child Left
When Catholics go to mass, early in the service (before the readings, before the Eucharist), they often use a form of the penitential rite in which they say the following:
“I confess to almighty God,
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have sinned through my own fault;
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do….”
It goes on to ask the angels and saints, and all those assembled, to pray for them, for mercy, forgiveness and grace.
If only these weren’t hollow words and actions for most believers…. If only more people took “what I have failed to do” as seriously as these sisters.
I admire this story for how the sisters take their knowledge seriously, and their confession, and obligation. They harmed no one, they want others to wake up to the knowledge of what our taxpayer dollars have done and could do, and they don’t want to be among the complicit who did nothing, or who preferred to sleep the sweet and easy sleep of denial and ignorance.
The founding fathers called people to a violent revolution against powerful oppressors, but these women lead us to a more profound realization: If enough people knew, and if enough people demanded changes in policies, even symbolic acts of bloodshed would not be necessary. If you could reach enough people with the message, and if enough people “stood in their power” and went on strike, for example, “leaders” would have to listen and adjust.
The Lysistrata of Aristophanes is sometimes seen as an old Greek story of women who force men to stop war by refusing them sex. But it’s more than that. It’s a story not just about women, but about people who were considered “powerless” in their culture. They refuse to accept or assume that they are, in fact, powerless. They think outside the box and find their power. And it works, without bloodshed (in the fiction, anyway).
I’m glad the sisters strove to stand in their power. Now let’s all go forth in peace, and do the same.
whatfools,
Bush’s foreign policy, particularly the policy in Iraq, appears to be “No Child Left Alive.”
By the way, those nuns are true heroes (we don’t say heroines anymore, do we?) of the human race.
We need more people like these Sisters, especially religious leaders because they preach for PEACE. What better way than to appeal for less War making tools. Big Ups to the folks at Jonah House and the Plowshares.
We need more PEACE in this world.
Well, this certainly isn’t very Christian of them!
One wonders, when a fellow by the title of Prince of Peace is deified by more than a billion people, how this can be such a rare case. I think this tri-nun-virate is doing something great, but I can’t see the young Jesus Freak or the mainstream preacher taking to a cause like this …not as long as some young girl can legally get an abortion somewhere. Last time I was in a church, for a funeral, the priest made a point of blessing our fighting men and women in uniform. What branch of the US military would the Prince of Peace have been in? These nuns are great, but why exactly are they nuns/Christians if they care about something like the survival of the human species?
I’ve always used the excuse that I have children to support, but the truth is women are braver than men, and even though the Catholic Church and I parted ways years ago, I have to take my hat off to these nuns.
Maybe when the Repos have run out of power—-
Back in the late 70’s and early 80’s, Sister Ardeth and Sister Carol shared a very small, sparsely furnished house in one of the poorest neighborhoods here in Saginaw, Michigan, from which they ran a ministry for largely focusing on the day-to-day survival needs of street people. They also practiced (and preached) nonviolent political activism at a time in the Cold War before the Vatican had formally and decisively turned its back upon what was widely known as liberation theology.
As a Dominican sister and former school teacher whose door was literally always open for anybody in need of a sandwich or a place to just rest awhile, Ardeth Platte had a most unlikely background resume and lifestyle to campaign successfully for public office. She was elected several times to serve on the Saginaw City Council.
There at City Hall, she rubbed shoulders regularly with the rich and powerful, never hesitating to stare down the establishment movers and shakers and deliver a sermonette about hypocrisy straight to the face, at least if a social justice issue were at stake and more demur, traditional modes of partisan persuasion had come up short.
Back in her old “political days”, Sr. Ardeth was as admired and loved by her supporters as she was despised and viciously villified by her opponents, particularly partisan foes endowed with excess testosterone.
Gradually, Ardeth and Carol began focusing more and more upon nuclear weaponry as the central evil to be addressed, with racism, sexism, and global economic exploitation all rooted in a de-humanizing, hard core militarism that continuously swallows up the common tax resources desperately needed to help build a better world. It is a genuinely existential world view.
Michigan’s loss is Baltimore’s gain. Ardeth and Carol stopped through town several months ago, and there was a reunion of sorts from back in the day. They looked great. One person who was unable to make it, but who I remember definitely did attend a meeting or two at the little house on the east side of Saginaw, was a guy named Michael Moore, back when he edited a newspaper called the Flint Voice.
Small world. You work hard, keep dreaming big, and who knows what might happen?
Bill from Saginaw
Bubbles Too
who is holding the curtain for the back room players
and how many layers of gilded goose me down eros
does it take to muffle the shadows of delight
delight to be on the take like die Enron nation heirs
who
lighten the bubble of fortune just like the ‘little boy’
or that ‘fat man’ double fortune buoy
drifting bubbles
bubbles of the dream
transparent so they seem
happy bubbles brave and free
bubble bounding bubbles
drifting like the Enron nation from sea to sea to sea
What a powerful message of what love means… not the kind limited to a single person, but to the world family.
I remember when the nuns took their bold blood-spilling step and was as moved then as I am now reading that they are still speaking and acting against this most hateful technology. These nuns are an inspiration to me to keep fighting and truth telling.
P.S. Thanks for the background on Lysistrata, PF-Flyer. Totally apropos.
Very inspiring, Sisters.
She cited our war in Afghanistan, where we wanted to build an oil pipeline, and in Iraq, where we wanted their oil.
That’s a great way to put it.
PF Flyer,
Thanks for excellent remarks. Some of us Catholics DO try to take those words seriously.
Oddly, those that do are often Catholics like me who are agnostic and only step foot in a church rarely for the sake of family or tradition (weddings, funeral masses, occasional holy days). The core Catholic belief that it is our ACTIONS that count, not “faith” or “accepting Jesus as our personal savior” that the Protestants believe (whatever the hell those could mean), that allow one to continue to call themselves “Catholic” even when they are Athiest or Buddhist - similar to the way the Buddist Alan Ginsberg continues to call himself a Jew until his death.
Sister Carol asserts that if Vision 2020 is enacted, then utter devastation of life on the planet will result. This statement is hard to prove, and even if one succeeded in proving it, how would the general public be convinced to oppose the push towards a militaristic and economic hegemony? Since the common belief resonating throughout news media is that terrorism ( with the unspoken qualifier that anti-state violence is terror whereas state-sanctioned violence must be called something else ) is the greatest threat to the continued existence of the U.S.A., the vast majority of its citizens support without question the expansion of its military capability.
I love these brave nuns and believe they are on the right side, but how do we build a movement from their acts of civil disobedience? I personally am not going to risk doing hard time ( and my time would probably be harder than theirs since I am male and not a person of any social standing whatsoever ) unless I thought my actions had a reasonable chance of changing the world.
Well, after how the Bush administration has manipulated one Christian church after another into supporting him so he can have his “Armaggeddon” in the Middle East, I’m not exactly a big fan of the Christian church, but I sure am a big fan of these nuns.
“Everyone has a conscience. It is personal, of course.I think that I currently fulfill all the obligations I have to my conscience. Pushing aside information about what is happening near you in your time is shameless.”
Anna Politkovskaya (1950-2006)
The clock is ticking.