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December 2, 2020 –
From PM Press

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By Susie Day

From left to right: Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill,
Elizabeth McAlister,
Steve Kelly, SJ (priest),
Martha Hennessy,
Mark Colville, and
Carmen Trotta

April
4, 2018, fifty years after Martin Luther King’s murder: Seven white,
aging Catholic peace activists cut a fence and enter Georgia’s Kings
Bay Naval Base, the largest nuclear submarine base in the world. They
carry hammers and bottles of their own blood to deface nuclear
monuments, and banners decrying “omnicide”: the
unimaginable destruction promised by nuclear weapons, not only of
human life, but of life on Earth. They read a statement, repenting of
“the sin of white supremacy” and resisting U.S. “militarism
that has employed violence to enforce global domination.”
They’re arrested and thrown into jail.

Heartfelt
and daring, this protest was meant to be known around the world. It’s
barely been noticed.

This
“Plowshares 7” action is just the latest in decades of
nonviolent, Catholic-led protests, wielding hammers, blood, and
banners, begging the world to pay attention to the increasing threat
of nuclear war.

Says
Clare Grady, 62, a Plowshares 7 defendant: “When I was younger,
if you had this antinuclear awakening, there were any number of
activist choices. That doesn’t exist now, except for some older white
people still doing it – it’s definitely not cool.”

Since
Plowshares actions began in 1980, many arrests, convictions, and much
jail time have accrued. On November 12, Clare was sentenced to one
year and a day. She’s due to report to federal prison in February.

I
also fear nuclear weapons, energy, and accidents. Yet I’ve done
almost nothing to speak up about this. That’s why I called Clare at
her home in Ithaca, NY, and asked her about her life.

An
Irish Thing

I
was born and raised in the Bronx. My dad was the child of Irish
immigrants. His mother was a maid her entire life and never lost her
Irish brogue.

My
dad was underground a lot, doing draft resistance, draft board
actions. The FBI were always trying to catch him; they’d come to our
apartment. The neighborhood kids had a fun time, calling them
flatfoot and things, ’cause they were so obvious. But my nana was:
[speaking in brogue]
“Go away,
will ye?” My childhood was filled with these experiences, which
is perhaps unusual for people that look like me.

This
was the late ’60s, early ’70s. My dad was part of the Camden 28
[anti-Vietnam War
activists charged with 1971 raid on Camden, NJ draft board],
so he was hugely on J. Edgar Hoover’s wanted list. The FBI referred
to my dad as “Quicksilver” because he kept evading them. He
was always in – I guess you’d call it “good trouble”
these days.

Our
mom had five kids and more than anything loved being a mother and
being in the Bronx. She was from Chicago, so she didn’t talk like
everybody else’s “muthah.”

We
grew up with dear, beloved friends – almost all of whom we’re still
in touch with. It was really a tight neighborhood. I went to John
Philip Sousa Jr. High School, and Angela Davis was on everybody’s
minds then, like the Black Panthers. My school was maybe 10% white,
with the rest Black and Puerto Rican. We have good times now,
connecting over our childhoods and what it looked like from different
perspectives.

My
mom supported my dad ’cause he was underground so much. Us kids knew
he was underground. It’s an Irish thing – we had this friend from
Ireland, Lonnie Donegan, who’d come over here to do music. He’d warn
us: [brogue]
“Tell them nothing.”

Because
we’d been colonized for 700 years. So there was this culture already
in place, and our dad – even though he was born in the Bronx –
identified with the Irish rebel more than anything.

He
was arrested during that Camden raid and put right in jail. I
remember they brought him into the courthouse. Everybody was chained,
shackled together, walking through the hallway to the courtroom,
singing Irish rebel songs. He was surrounded by a bunch of other
first-generation Irish people whose mothers were very connected to
the resistance in Ireland. Like, never lose your roots?

The
Monster Won’t Decapitate Itself

We
moved to Ithaca when I was going into tenth grade. While it was
breathtakingly beautiful, this Cayuga land where I lived, I was
feeling the lack of the Bronx. I was in high school here three years,
then I went back to New York City and joined the United Farm Workers.
I was waitressing, taking classes at Hunter College, living on the
Lower East Side. Then in 1980, Plowshares Eight happened [General
Electric Nuclear Missile Re-entry Division, King of Prussia, PA].

When
I heard about that, I thought: “Trying to get the United States
government to disarm is like asking a monster to decapitate itself.
Just not gonna happen.”

Then
I realized, “They’re not asking the US government; they’re doing
it themselves.”
It was so liberating. That began a revisiting of my family tradition,
nonviolent Catholic action. I saw it as not opposed to other actions,
like collective bargaining and strikes, but as something different,
that can absolutely energize a situation.

Back
in Ithaca, I’d had a social studies teacher, Mr. Kane, little white
guy, God bless him. He had us read The
Autobiography of Malcolm X –
he was the only teacher in that school who’d do such a thing – and
had us watch footage of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing. Until then, it’d
been pretty much classified. I’d already done some study; I knew the
dangers of nuclear weapons.

Then
in November 1982, my 19-year-old sister Ellen and my 21-year-old
brother John did the Plowshares Four action [General
Dynamics Electric Boat Shipyard, Groton, CT].
Going to the trial of my brother and my sister, I saw so clearly how
the court was protecting the weapons and shutting out the truth about
their mere existence.

So
in November ’83, on Thanksgiving Day, I acted with the Plowshares at
the Strategic Air Command at Griffiss Air Force Base in Rome, New
York. It was the home of the B-52 bombers we’d used in Vietnam, to
rain down death and suffering. They were being refitted to carry
first-strike cruise missiles. We hammered on the doors of those
bombers. Seven of us were charged with sabotage and put on trial in
Syracuse federal court.

We
were acquitted of sabotage – which was huge, ’cause it carried 25
years – but found guilty of destroying government property. Three
of us women were given two-year sentences because we didn’t have
college degrees, and four were given three-year sentences because
they
shoulda known better – as insulting as that. Four of us were sent
to Alderson for 18 months. That was my first time being in prison.

What’s
important for me is that I was living my life. So when I got out of
prison, I came back to Ithaca and worked at a community kitchen,
Loaves and Fishes, for like 17 years, while my kids were being born.
I literally went into labor there.

When
my kids were in their early teens, I was part of this symbolic action
on St. Patrick’s Day in 2003 [Lansing,
NY, military recruitment center],
at the dawn of Shock and Awe. We simply poured our blood in a
vestibule, right? The feds indicted us and I ended up spending time
in FCC Philly for that.

Racial
Justice Essential

Then,
in Ithaca, there was a murder by a white cop just two blocks from
where I live. I looked out my window and, because of the life I’d
lived, I could see at a glance the police had done something terrible
– they had killed this Black man, Shawn Greenwood. I was on two
collectives for justice for him – this was before Black Lives
Matter. This standing up for racial justice gets neglected by most of
us white people. Even when we know better, even when our parents
didn’t raise us like that, we forget that racial justice is
essential.

I
was at Standing Rock. My time working with water protectors there was
profound. The Red Warrior Camp put out a video and said, if you do
nonviolent direct action, we want you to come.

Two
things to know. One, Standing Rock resistance was started by the
youth. Two, they explicitly wanted it to be rooted in prayer. That
was rarely translated by the time it got to the East Coast. There was
this symbolic action of saying prayers at the frontline. I’m like, “I
am not Indigenous; this is not my land; but I’m glad to see people
doing this and not apologizing for it.”

The
older I get, I see the swirling of how the creator connects us in
these weavings. It reinforces my sense that no one person is
expendable, but no one is carrying it all, either. Your imagination
is not big enough to carry what’s unfolding.

Holding
Back Armageddon

The
blood that we poured at Kings Bay Naval Base? I’m part of a community
where blood is used as a symbol of atonement. It cuts through
intellectual brain fog. It’s also not a big deal, the blood’s drawn
by a nurse, and it’s stored carefully. We took a little of our blood
in small bottles, and we took hammers – household hammers – and
spray-paint and bolt cutters and banners – we brought three to
Kings Bay.

You
know, the Trident is literally the most deadly weapon on this planet.
There are 14 Trident nuclear submarines with six at Kings Bay. That’s
their homeport. Our factsheet says, among other things, that each of
those submarines can carry 24 ballistic missiles; each missile can
carry up to eight 100-kiloton nuclear warheads – or about 30 times
the explosive force of the Hiroshima bomb.

Most
people have no idea. Honestly, I don’t think about it every day. I
try to act humanly in the face of what I know, and emphasize the
positive part of what I feel we’re called to do. I’m trusting that
universal spirit is holding back Armageddon for us to get our stuff
together.

Finally,
after centuries of work by people of color, we have Black Lives
Matter – finally, we have these awakenings. I feel like we’re on
the cusp of something. My hope is that we start to weave in how
nuclear weapons are connected. For me, they’re the billy club of the
planet – the enforcement mechanism of white supremacy and global
capitalism. They’re used, 24/7, to extract resources, labor, and
life.

In
my sentencing statement I called on Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam”
speech, where he identifies the giant triplets of racism, militarism,
and extreme materialism. I said I took a nonviolent disarmament
action because the Trident is killing in my name. It doesn’t just
kill if it’s launched, it kills every day. Indigenous people are some
of the first victims – the mining, refining, testing, and dumping
of radioactive material for nuclear weapons happens on Native Land…

I
knew, even though the judge could get pissed off and give me more
time, that I wasn’t just speaking to the judge. I got 12 months and a
day. I just got the papers, I report on February 10. They’re still
deciding where to send me. It’s crazy; I’m really scared of being in
prison during COVID. But people can get stuck on, “Oh, poor
you.”

Actually,
it’s all of us. If you have any kind of privilege or power, use it
because we’re on this cusp now. Listen to the voices of the
Hibakusha, the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Learn how we’ve used nuclear weapons – what did that look like?
What does it look like now?

Listen
to the scientists who are telling us, “Hey, we have 100 seconds
to midnight…” Then connect the dots to Indigenous people and
people of color who have been on the frontlines of this violence
daily.