“Our grandma is in jail,” Madeline tells a woman wrestling a shopping cart at Target.
“She went over a war fence and tried to make peace,” Seamus adds helpfully. “They arrested her, and she is in jail now.”
“Where?” the woman asks, looking from them to me in disbelief and maybe pity.
“We don’t remember,” the kids say, suddenly done with their story and ready to make passionate pleas for the colorful items in the dollar section over the woman’s shoulder.
“Georgia,” I say, but I don’t have a lot of energy to add detail to my kids’ story. They hit all the high points.
“There’s a lot going on these days,” she says. I agree, and we move on into the store and our separate errands.
I was happy not to say more at that moment, happy to avoid a sobbing breakdown at Target, happy to wrestle one little bit of normal out of a very abnormal day.
My mom, Liz McAlister, who turned 78 in November, had been arrested deep inside the King’s Bay Naval Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia in the early hours of Wednesday morning. Along with six friends, she carried banners, statements, hammers and blood onto the base. They started their action on April 4: the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination.
Their statement made connections between nuclear weapons, white supremacy and deeply embedded racism. It is a long statement, but given that they were carrying it into a free-fire zone — where military personnel are authorized to use deadly force — there was no particular need for brevity: “We come to Kings Bay to answer the call of the prophet Isaiah (2:4) to ‘beat swords into plowshares’ by disarming the world’s deadliest nuclear weapon, the Trident submarine. We repent of the sin of white supremacy that oppresses and takes the lives of people of color here in the United States and throughout the world. We resist militarism that has employed deadly violence to enforce global domination. We believe reparations are required for stolen land, labor and lives.”
They walked onto King’s Bay Naval Station just hours after Saheed Vassell was shot and killed in a barrage of bullets by New York City police officers, just hours after hundreds of demonstrators filled the streets of Sacramento for another day, shouting “Stephon Clark, Stephon Clark, Stephon Clark” and demanding accountability after the young father of two was killed by police officers on March 18. These seven white activists know that when you are black in this country, your own corner, your grandmother’s own backyard, is a free-fire zone more dangerous than any military base.
There is indeed a lot going on these days.
The statement continues: “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.”
Kings Bay is the largest nuclear submarine base in the world at about 16,000 acres. It is the home port of the U.S. Navy Atlantic Fleet’s Trident nuclear-powered submarines. There are eight in total, two guided missile submarines and six ballistic missile submarines. These submarines were all built in Groton, Connecticut — right across the river from our home in New London. Each submarine, my mom and her friends assert, carries the capacity to cause devastation equivalent to 600 of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima, Japan.
“Nuclear weapons kill every day through our mining, production, testing, storage and dumping, primarily on indigenous native land. This weapons system is a cocked gun being held to the head of the planet. As white Catholics, we take responsibility to atone for the horrific crimes stemming from our complicity with ‘the triplets’ [of evil]. Only then can we begin to restore right relationships. We seek to bring about a world free of nuclear weapons, racism and economic exploitation.”
That is not the end, you can read the whole statement and their indictment of the United States on their Facebook group.
These sorts of actions — called Plowshares — have a nearly 40-year history, since my father and uncle and six others broke into the King of Prussia plant in Pennsylvania in 198o to “beat swords into plowshares.” They struck at nosecones with hammers and marked the weapons with blood to reveal the human costs and mess and suffering the weapons are built to wreak in the world.
My father participated in five of these Plowshares actions in his lifetime and helped organize countless others. Committed conspirers, steeped in active nonviolence, have carried out more than 100 of these actions since 1980. This is my mom’s second action. She and her current co-defendant Clare Grady, were part of the 1983 Griffiss Plowshares in upstate New York.
My parents estimated that they spent 11 years of their 27-year marriage separated by prison, and it was mostly these actions that kept them apart and away from us. Countless life events in our family — birthdays, graduations, celebrations of all kinds — were stuttered by the absence of one of our parents. I say this with pain and loss, but no self-pity. Dad was able to attend my high school graduation, but not my brother’s. We went straight from my college graduation to visit my dad in jail in Maine. I missed all the raging keggers, sweaty dance parties and tearful goodbyes that marked the end of college for my friends to sit knee-to-knee with my father in a cramped and soulless room. On chairs designed for maximum discomfort, I tried to share my momentous day and all my 22-year-old big feelings while ignoring the guards and the room crowded with a dozen others doing the same thing. We wrote thousands of letters. They often crisscrossed each other so that there was a constant weaving of story and sharing across the miles.
So, when I explained that grandma was in jail to my kids — 11-year-old Rosena, 5-year-old Seamus and 4-year-old Madeline — I felt the weight of a lifetime of missing and provisional family experiences, frequently lived in prison visiting rooms and through urgently scrawled letters.
I tried to figure out a way to talk to them that would make sense and, in thinking it through, I realized that none of this should make sense to anyone! Nuclear weapons? Absurd! Police brutality and white supremacy? Senseless! Plowshares actions with their symbolic transformation and ritual mess-making? A foolhardy act of David versus Goliath proportions!
So, I didn’t try to make it make sense. I just forged ahead, grateful that they had some context: We had participated in the Good Friday Stations of the Cross organized by Catholic Worker friends at our local submarine base a few days earlier, and — the night before — we had gone to hear a dramatic reading of Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
“Hey guys, know how we went to the sub base on Friday? Grandma was arrested in a place like that late last night. She is in jail now. She and her friends broke onto the base to say that nuclear weapons are wrong. Remember how Dr. King talked about just and unjust laws?” They nodded and remembered that King said “one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” I told them that Grandma thinks that nuclear weapons — things that can destroy so much life on our planet — shouldn’t be built and protected and paid for when so many people are hungry, so many kids don’t have good schools to go to, so many people don’t have good homes. I went on and on.
“Wait, these nuclear weapons … They are war things?” Seamus asked.
“Yep, they are war things, bud.”
“Good for grandma,” he said, and that was the end of our serious conversation.
Mom and her friends are charged with misdemeanor criminal trespass and two felonies: possession of tools for the commission of a crime and interference with government property.
The kids and I didn’t talk about the kind of jail time that could mean for their grandma. It is all I am thinking about right now, but they moved on, imagining out loud and with a lot of enthusiasm how grandma got by the attack dogs and police officers they had seen at the Groton Submarine Base. They were sure there was a similar set up in Georgia. “Grandma needed a ladder and a cheetah,” said Madeline. “A cheetah is the only animal that can outrun dogs and police officer’s bullets.”
I am pretty sure no cheetahs were involved in the Kings Bay Plowshares, but I am happy my daughter sees her grandmother as a fierce and powerful anti-war activist astride a wild cat.
What a moving account of the heroism of the participants in this Ploughshares action and its impact on the lives of the families of those involved. I am grateful and proud to know some of the participants in this event who like Jesus are willing to lay down their lives and take up the cross for the sake of redeeming humanity.
I have always thought of Liz riding forth on a warrier cheetah “…as a fierce and powerful anti-war activist …”, the same as all the Berrigans.
Frieda. I am so blessed to read your exquisite explanation of your family history and it’s meaning to you and to hear how the next generation is doing with the present day events with your Mom and the others Praise God for all your family peace keeping efforts It humbles me Thank you F.Goekler-Morneau
Last Good Friday, I was arrested-detained at the gates of Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Labs here in California with 26 other clergy and laity. Ecumenical Peace Institute holds Stations of the Cross, vigil, and gathering at this nuclear weapons base every Good Friday. I stood with Fr Louis Vitale, OFM and we prayed. I have participated in peace making for many years and feel the urgency that have grown over the last several years as the nuclear insanity increases with the risk going from 5 minutes to armaggedon to 2.5 minutes this last year. I work as a special education advocate directly with families, very vulnerable needy families. Every nickel of the $1.92 billion spent at Livermore to annihilate us all over and over is senseless and robs every child an education. Most especially the meager special education funding that is squeezed out of state and federal budgets never funds the task of educating our many children (neurotypical or those with a variety of unique conditions.) The massive amounts of money dumped into nuclear weaponry does not feed the poor, shelter people, or comfort them from societal traumas. Quite the opposite nuclear power is the devil’s spawn. We as Catholics and myself as a member of the Secular Franciscan Order, are called to light, laughter, and love as we wage peace. It is this that I wish for those arrested. I send comfort to family members who will be concerned and separated form these courageous, caring kindred folks for some time. Please know that Edd, my husband and I were touched by Fr Daniel Berrigan’s peace making retreat many years back at Casa De Maria in Santa Barbara, and to us and for us all these activists love and action means more than you/we know. Swords into plowshares was a verse in our wedding vows. It is the love and this “perfect joy” that binds us with the divine spark of life to the Eucharist. In unity we say P R E S E NT E!
The comments section indicates that there are nine comments, but only five are visible, and I see no way to show others, including comments that I saw earlier today. I tried a few different browsers. Any advice?
It’s likely due to the removal of comments that violated WNV’s comment policy (along with responses to the violations, which no longer are required). Apologies for the confusion.
Bryan: Thank you for the response. Personally, I would prefer that such comments could still be read by those who choose to see them, though I understand the desire to avoid online “flame wars”.
Thanks John. We do understand that perspective on comments. Unfortunately, our system isn’t sophisticated enough for user moderation. And I’m afraid if we don’t have a comment policy that is enforced, it will turn this into a much less productive space. That being said, we are really thankful to those who took the time to offer thoughtful responses to the predictable reactionary comments that did violate our policy.
Thank you for sharing! It’s so important that our movements discuss the impact of all our work and activism on our family and home lives, and find ways to tell our stories to our children.
Can we write to the Kings Bay Plowshares participants? These actions must be lonely at times. Are they allowed to receive letters?
Yes! Their current jail addresses and instructions for writing (very important – pre-stamped postcards only!) are found here:
http://www.nukeresister.org/inside-out/
That page is kept up-to-date!
Legal updates will be posted at http://www.nukeresister.org and on the group’s Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/Kingsbayplowshares/
Their current status is told here:
http://www.nukeresister.org/2018/04/06/bond-denied-for-kings-bay-plowshares-activists/
Dear Frida, Thank you so much for that wonderful piece. We are so grateful to your mom, Martha, Carmen and the others. I will begin my postcard writing tomorrow. Much love,
Trudy Silver
Thank you so deeply Frida and family. This article says it all so perfectly succintly. Thank you! We’re with you in thought and prayer and staying tuned each as the 7 inspire us to move onward together in ridding the world of these unnecessary horrors.
Thank you Frida for sharing your Mom’s courage, love and commitment over all these years with the rest of us. There is some part of me that hopes I am in jail at 78 too.
One of the protestors, Patrick & his family gave me love and a shelter during my darkest hour. They never asked anything of me, it was just their huge hearts and dedication ovtge CWM. I as not aware of the Catholic Workers Movement, much less his actions with Plowshares until much later. I am not Christian, but that didn’t matter. I don’t necessarily agree, nor recommend anyone go to the extremes those imprisoned have. BUT, I have much respect in that they walk the talk. In a world where people are twisting scripture to find reason for violence and hate, they are the pulling out the true message of peace, love, and kindness that can be applicable for anyone of any faith. As I write, Syria was bombed last night. I just so happened to think I’d like to discuss it with him. Just to get his perspective. I had no idea he was in jail until a few minutes ago They bravery of all the protesters is immense, may they be safe and return home soon.