Breaking into the Oak Ridge Y-12 National Security Complex for peace

May 2, 2013 7:00 AM

An elderly nun and two middle-aged men broke into Y-12 National Security Complex last year and splashed a dead friend's blood on the wall. Oak Ridge, Tennessee- previously -a company town for an all-American venture: nuclear war. On a summer day nine months ago Megan Gillespie Rice, an 82 year-old nun, along with Vietnam Vet Michael Walli- her self-styled bodyguard-, and their friend Gregory Boertje-Obed left the town and hiked over the hill to the plant that spawned the town. They made it all the way into the facility by cutting through fences; they poured blood on the wall of a building, and were arrested. They are now on trial for sabotage and may spend the rest of their lives in prison. Their trial is one of many faced by religious pacifists who have attempted to symbolically beat swords into plowshares. They follow in a long tradition, inspired in part by Dorothy Day (previously), the Catholic Worker movement, Philip Berrigan (previously).
posted by mareli (54 comments total)

If security at the Y-12 National Security Complex is so unforgivably incompetent that a drifter, an 82-year-old nun and a house painter can break into it with nothing more than a pair of wire cutters, then perhaps they're not the ones who should be on trial.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 7:08 AM on May 2, 2013 [20 favorites]

Sabotage??? I don't think the shoe fits.
posted by grobstein at 7:11 AM on May 2, 2013 [4 favorites]

Wow, that WP article sure is flowery. Wonder how this kind of thing ends up in the style section.
posted by smackfu at 7:14 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

I don't think the shoe fits.

Your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear.

"Strung along the fence were yellow “No Trespassing” placards threatening a $100,000 fine and up to one year in prison.

The house painter gripped a pair of bolt cutters, fixed the jaws around a link and squeezed. He cut links in three lines, then opened the new flap.

No alarm. No patrol cars.

The nun went through first."

I'm telling you it's sabotage.
posted by three blind mice at 7:22 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

"Trial" link is broken for me.
posted by daveliepmann at 7:25 AM on May 2, 2013

Mod note: fixed up the link, carry on
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 7:28 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

wolfdreams01, I'm sure there'll be an expensive, extensive re-evaluation of the security protocols and measures, and those who were supposed to be guarding the perimeter will be severely reprimanded. But this trial is to scare people away from trying to repeat this straight-forward case of trespassing. "We're serious about this," the government is saying. "We're so serious that you shouldn't test us, that we're willing to throw three aging pacificsts in jail for the rest of their lives."


I'm telling you it's sabotage

From the article:

One of these felonies is rarely leveled against civilians: “intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States,” as written under the “Sabotage” chapter of the U.S. Code.
...
After Michael, Greg and Sister Megan refused a plea bargain, the government hit them with the more serious charge under the sabotage act.

Sabotage wasn't put on the table until they refused the plea bargain. Again, government flexing its muscle to scare other would-be trespassers, sprayers of blood, and wielders of bolt cutters and hammers. The damage to the facilities? Two fences, some fiber-optic sensors, and the surface of a wall that was "designed to withstand the impact of aircraft." Their weapon of destruction against that wall? A claw hammer and a small sledge hammer.

Trespass: a maximum sentence of 1 year in jail. Defacing/damaging public property? Another year or two, I'd guess. Sabotage? Bullshit.
posted by filthy light thief at 7:40 AM on May 2, 2013 [7 favorites]

Sabotage? Bullshit.

You're scheming on a thing that's a mirage. They fully intended to "interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States." It would seem that was the entire point. I know they planned it.

You devalue the symbolic value of their protest by saying "it was just a small hammer." Obviously they hoped that it would nonetheless bring down the whole installation. Their blatant disregard for government regulation - those no-trespassing signs - makes them outlaws of the worst sort and it's also what makes their protest a worthy one.
posted by three blind mice at 7:59 AM on May 2, 2013 [5 favorites]

interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States

It occurs to me that under this wording any peace activist or protestor could be considered to be guilty of "sabotage."
posted by cmoj at 8:06 AM on May 2, 2013 [10 favorites]

> They fully intended to "interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States."

Lots of people intend to do lots of things. In this case, a DOJ prosecutor intends to use the law as a blunt instrument of retribution instead of justice.
posted by Panjandrum at 8:29 AM on May 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

Fellow Right-wingers!

These are people happy to die in jail for their principles. As someone who values individual liberty above all, that is the greatest form of self-expression that there is.

Pay them respect! They didn't blame it on the 1%, or the evil white cos males, or Society. They said No, there is no such thing as society, there is only us. And they acted, as individuals.

They are true right-wing individualists, and I applaud them. You should too.
posted by alasdair at 8:29 AM on May 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

Do we all get to project whatever ideologies we want? I'm gonna say they're communo-anarchists! Probably Thelemic sorcerers too!
posted by cmoj at 8:38 AM on May 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

They poured and splashed blood that had once been in the veins of a painter-activist named Tom Lewis, one of the Catonsville Nine who, on Hiroshima Day 1987, hammered on the bomb racks of an anti-submarine plane at the South Weymouth Naval Air Station near Boston. In 2008, Lewis died in his sleep, and his blood was frozen so that he might one day participate in one last Plowshares action.

In bright red rivulets, the last of Tom Lewis streaked down the concrete.

That's pretty hardcore.
posted by emjaybee at 8:42 AM on May 2, 2013 [11 favorites]

The Catholic Church would be so much more awesome if the nuns took over.
posted by charred husk at 9:03 AM on May 2, 2013 [23 favorites]

Operation Bad Habit is a go.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 9:06 AM on May 2, 2013 [6 favorites]

mareli, thank you so much for sharing this. This was a really impressive and beautiful action and I'd heard nothing about it before now. I'm tearing up at the bravery and dedication of these three peace activists.
posted by daisyk at 9:09 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

"They fully intended to "interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States." It would seem that was the entire point. I know they planned it."

How do you know this?
posted by marienbad at 9:18 AM on May 2, 2013

For further reading on Catholic antiwar activism/radicalism, there is the excellent book on the Catonsville Nine by Shawn Francis Peters (disclosure: Shawn is a buddy of mine from grad school).
posted by scody at 9:20 AM on May 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

> They said No, there is no such thing as society, there is only us.

I'm sorry, what is this? Are you deliberately trying to mock these people, or are you willfully completely ignorant of what they're about?

The peace movement is exactly the opposite of the travesty you're presenting. They are trying to build a more just society which respects the right of everyone, not just rich Americans.

If this was supposed to be funny, it is not. These people are facing hard time for standing up for what they believe in. There's nothing funny about that at all...
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:23 AM on May 2, 2013 [4 favorites]

Yeah, Catholic Workers tried to co-opt our local Occupy Wall Street groups. They would try to dominate GAs and then their ridiculous protest tactics were soundly downvoted. So they'd just do them anyway, by themselves, and claim they were OWS. That pretty much destroyed the goodwill we had spent months trying to generate amongst the local community.

Oh how many times have I listened to the CWs boast of how many times they had been arrested, and what celebrity activists they shared jail cells with. It seemed like a satire of activism, and they weren't self-aware enough to realize it. I think everyone got particularly fed up with their method of calling the press to tell them they were about to be arrested, and then calling the police on themselves only after the press showed up. The only effect was one more arrest to add to their glorious rap sheet. I tried to tell them, if their protests were effective, we wouldn't have needed OWS. But they weren't effective. Keep doing the same old thing, and you get the same old results. But that's what they wanted, the same old results. I don't know what they could possibly achieve by doing this, other than to establish themselves as professional activists.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:27 AM on May 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

"We're so serious that you shouldn't test us, that we're willing to throw three aging pacificsts in jail for the rest of their lives."

So the creators and profiteers of the financial meltdown, not so much?
posted by Mental Wimp at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Well, a peace activist would have to do damage to a "war material", "war premise", or "war utility" (see here).

Note that this does include a lot of things, such as mines and agriculture that supply the military. Interfering with a company that is involved with weapon production via a disruptive protest at their loading dock could potentially qualify.

In terms of the pair's actions, they certainly come under this law, although I think the maximum sentence is grossly disproportionate to this particular crime.
posted by demiurge at 9:32 AM on May 2, 2013

interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States

It occurs to me that under this wording any peace activist or protestor could be considered to be guilty of "sabotage."

No, because of the rest of the law which is not quoted:

Whoever, with intent to injure, interfere with, or obstruct the national defense of the United States, willfully injures, destroys, contaminates or infects, or attempts to so injure, destroy, contaminate or infect any national-defense material, national-defense premises, or national-defense utilities, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both, and, if death results to any person, shall be imprisoned for any term of years or for life.

"any peace activist and protestor" is not injuring, destroying, etc.

"They fully intended to "interfere with and obstruct the national defense of the United States." It would seem that was the entire point. I know they planned it."

How do you know this?

Its a consequence of their neccesity defense.
posted by Jahaza at 9:35 AM on May 2, 2013

I don't know what the right answer is, I admit. But I have to say, I don't think this is it. That is, I don't think this action is at all likely to change many people's outlook on the issue. And particularly, not the hearts and minds of the kinds of people who set government spending or defense priorities. This barely even registered as news.

I'm not trying to start an argument here. I personally admire their commitment. But hold this up against the one for-reals leftward swing of public opinion in our lifetimes - that of gay marriage. That was effected by moving public opinion first, and then the political class was then obliged to follow. It wasn't the product of one illicit act with a pair of bolt cutters. It was a fair lifetime of many people, arguing civilly and pursuasively for their cause, while otherwise carrying on with engaged, responsible lives, that moved people's opinions.
posted by newdaddy at 9:42 AM on May 2, 2013

What they've done does seem to be within the statutory text of 18 USC 2155. But calling this "sabotage" feels to me like the Obama Justice Department's prosecuting government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act -- expanding the law beyond its intended scope to cow people who are inconvenient.
posted by grobstein at 9:52 AM on May 2, 2013 [2 favorites]

> I don't know what the right answer is, I admit. But I have to say, I don't think this is it.

There's an old Roman proverb: The person who says something is impossible must get out of the way of the person who is attempting to achieve it.

> It was a fair lifetime of many people, arguing civilly and pursuasively for their cause, while otherwise carrying on with engaged, responsible lives, that moved people's opinions.

With regards to the peace movement, we've been doing this for over half a century. We've respected the troops, we've gone to demonstrations - we had the largest demonstrations in the history of the planet against the Iraq War (though you would never have known from the tiny amount of press it got).

And where are we in 2013?

War is even more acceptable than ever. The dialog has been shifted from, "Should we kill people in other countries just because they might threaten us in the future?" to, "Should we kill them with drones, boots on the ground, or bombing?" The idea that the US are the good guys has faded away - we're no longer claiming that we're doing these military actions because it's the right thing to do, but because any amount of killing of foreigners is worth even the tiniest reduction in "threat".

So your strategy has been worse than useless - the anti-war movement has lost almost every battle and become a pale shadow of itself.

I don't know if what they're doing is the right thing - but something has to be done and they're putting their bodies on the line for it.

(Frankly, the reason that gay rights has steadily moved forward is that it's zero threat to the people in charge. They don't make any money out of people not getting to marry, they don't particularly increase their control over others with it, they really don't care. Both parties actually love this issue as it's one of the few actual differences between them, and one that they can milk for a long time, without cutting into the profits of the military-industrial complex, or Wall Street...)
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:59 AM on May 2, 2013 [9 favorites]

How sad is it that the most reasonable way we we have to fix the machine that is the US government is to poke holes in it's processes and wait for it's infinitely imploding reaction.
posted by Blue_Villain at 9:59 AM on May 2, 2013

Oh man. Oh man. That brings back memories, right there.

I grew up in Oak Ridge. Lots of my family still lives there. I have friends who work at Y-12 (although not on the weaponry bits.) I also grew up in the local Friends' Meeting, which, since Quakers are one of the historic peace churches, means that we were frequently heavily involved in peace protesting actions, some of them against Y-12. Quakers, if you're not aware, are very matter-of-fact about this sort of thing. We've had a lot of time to practice.

I remember being little and being at Meeting when the plans for the protests were being discussed. People came from all around-- Kentucky, Georgia, some from New England or California. We would find host families for them (on a few occasions they stayed at my house.) People would discuss the economic and social consequences of crossing the line and being booked for trespass and spending some time in the county jail, but as I recall there was never any pressure to 'go further'. If the Spirit led you to go over, you did. If not, you didn't. There was advance planning: people with young children who were led to protest in ways that got you arrested made plans to leave their children in the care of the Meeting until they could post bail and retrieve them (usually less than 24 hrs. later). Sometimes, if enough travelers were coming in, we would host them in the Meeting House itself, clearing out the semicircle of chairs from the central room so people could bring sleeping mats and blankets and whatnot. I was maybe... hm... four? five? Six? And I didn't really have any idea what was going on, apart from that Oak Ridge made weapons and my spiritual community didn't like that. You're not big on historical context when you're four.

Now, of course, I kind of get it. The relationship Oak Ridge has with the emotions of people who live and work there is odd and complex and would be a really good source of ethnographic study if there weren't so many security clearances standing in the way. I know a lot of very smart, very socially conscious people who work there now, and they are mostly very, very proud of the history of the place, which strikes me as completely bizarre. I hear them talk about social injustice and inequality and all this other stuff and then they'll turn around and say that Oak Ridge is a Great Center of Science (which it is) and that they're honored to be Such a Part of It because History Was Made Here (which is true) and the heavy undertone is that they're happy to be here because this is the place that let us end the war. And whether that's true or not, you would think that they would remember the death and destruction that entailed, and that similar research still takes place there, and acknowledge the contradictions between being proud of scientific achievement and sad about what humans are capable of when they're pushed to it. But, weirdly, they're really not. It's like the only way these people can cope with the implications of where they are is to blindly feel allegiance to it.

So in that sense, I think these protests are good. Oak Ridge is a quiet, peaceful town. It's got good jobs. There's a pretty great amount of diversity for a small Tennessee town (a good thing!) from lots of international scientists coming to work in the weapons industry in WW2 (probably a bad thing!) And it's really easy to forget that what goes on next door is the maintenance and production of all the uranium components that go into our arsenal. Not to mention the obscene amounts of pollution that come from such. There are places around there, according to the state geologist who lives across the street from my father, where the ground water from the rural wells on farms will leave blisters in your mouth it's so caustic, because when they buried a bunch of the waste from Y-12, they forgot to use the water-resistant concrete slurry to contain it and now the slurry is slowly dissolving into the aquifers. This is the same geologist who, on his quests for terrible amateur art, has found at least three highly radioactive items in people's antique and estate sales. But of course, pollution and legacy items like that aren't really talked about much.

So yeah, I think sometimes cutting some wires and splashing some blood is necessary. Does it do much on the national scale? Probably not, other than get the security company in a lot of trouble. But for me, it's a very personal reminder of the context of growing up in a strange, troubled place.
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2013 [15 favorites]

It is always particularily revolting to see the heavy hand of the US justice department in action and then all the people who jump up and handwave and say well they broke the law and deserve what they get, or they broke the law and this is a little harsh: instead of saying these people are really fucking heroes for being commited in their ideals and protesting the murderous state they live in which punishes 80 year olds for protesting and wines and dines the crooks and their cronies.
posted by adamvasco at 10:03 AM on May 2, 2013 [10 favorites]

So where do I sign up to have my body donated to nuns again?
posted by skrozidile at 10:14 AM on May 2, 2013

Unless their friend is a xenomorph, symbolic splashing of blood is not sabotage. They snipped the fence, I suppose that's breaking and entering. It's not a life sentence crime.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 10:30 AM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Are you deliberately trying to mock these people, or are you willfully completely ignorant of what they're about?

No, I really mean it. They didn't sit around on some website and bitch and moan. They went out and said "this is what I believe. It is right. I will go to prison because I am saying this."

If we right-wingers believe what we say we believe, then these people are he epitome of individual action, and we right-wingers should applaud them.
posted by alasdair at 10:54 AM on May 2, 2013

Here's what I found objectionable.

> They didn't blame it on the 1%, or the evil white cos males, or Society. They said No, there is no such thing as society, there is only us.

I don't believe they thought any such thing. I believe from talking to these people that they think exactly the reverse - that there is no such thing as an individual, only society.

And I'll bet if you talked to them, they'd have plenty to say about the 1%.


> And they acted, as individuals.

No, they did not act as individuals. They acted as a group of three people, part of a long tradition - FFS, they were carrying the blood of one of them who had died years before!

> They are true right-wing individualists,

This is a ridiculous mischaracterization, one that I'm completely sure any of them would object to.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 11:30 AM on May 2, 2013 [6 favorites]

"We're so serious that you shouldn't test us, that we're willing to throw three aging pacificsts in jail for the rest of their lives."

So the creators and profiteers of the financial meltdown, not so much?

Sabotage is only sabotage when we say it's sabotage.
*waves hand*
posted by BlueHorse at 12:25 PM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

>> It was a fair lifetime of many people, arguing civilly and pursuasively for their cause, while otherwise carrying on with engaged, responsible lives, that moved people's opinions.

With regards to the peace movement, we've been doing this for over half a century. We've respected the troops, we've gone to demonstrations - we had the largest demonstrations in the history of the planet against the Iraq War (though you would never have known from the tiny amount of press it got). And where are we in 2013? War is even more acceptable than ever....So your strategy has been worse than useless...

I guess that means the peace movement's arguments just haven't been adequate to accomplish their goals. Being civil is usually necessary but it's not sufficient for convincing anyone of anything. No one is entitled to have anyone else change their mind.

These sorts of protests just seem like pointless catharsis to me. What are they supposed to accomplish?
posted by cosmic.osmo at 1:57 PM on May 2, 2013

It seems the security organization at Y-12 was highly dysfunctional. The NNSA was pissed and sent a show cause notice (pdf), to which B&W sent a rather weak response (pdf), mostly saying that they shouldn't be punished because of all the good things that they've done, and that it was the security contractor's fault. Fun quotes:

A radio communication on the internal HEUMF network ("Hotel net") speculated that construction personnel were doing work at the tower base, although no work orders or other plans for maintenance activities had been communicated [...] (p. 2-5)

WSI has asserted that it had to handle 150 false or nuisance alarms per day as of July 28, with approximately 800 such alarms in the 96-hour period before the Security Event. (p. 3-20)

If WSI believed that the number or frequency of alarms was degrading its performance such that it was incapable of responding, it had multiple venues in which to raise a red flag. Until the Security Event, there is no record of WSI having done so. (p. 3-21)

There was also an issue with an inoperative camera, confusion during shift changes, and a new system software mandated by the NNSA that made it hard to clear alarms en masse, compounding the false-alarm issue. In short, WSI was a Mickey Mouse operation (it's a big plant, but 200 false alarms a day?! and you don't complain?), but B&W are also a bunch of jokers (it was their system being a total mess).
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 3:09 PM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

Reminds me of Sister Dorothy Hennessey, who turned down house arrest at the age of 88 to serve a six-month sentence in federal prison in 2001. She was arrested for trespassing during protests against the School of the Americas at Fort Benning.
posted by Snarl Furillo at 4:21 PM on May 2, 2013 [1 favorite]

OK, so we have a radical religious group whose extremist tactics have won it a lot of low-level support. Although many of its members lead ordinary lives, its leaders reject democracy in favor of what they call "God's Law".

Two former soldiers who became more religious while in the army were influenced by the sermons of an elderly cleric calling for attacks on US bases, and were recruited into a secret group tasked with infiltrating a nuclear weapons site. Using their operational skills they penetrated the base and attacked it with impact and percussive devices while exposing the inhabitants to biohazardous material. They were discovered in the kill zone by a sentry in an unarmoured vehicle who, despite being outnumbered, apprehended them and delivered them for questioning. While under interrogation the militants have declined to provide any information on further attacks.

Now read on.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:42 PM on May 2, 2013

How Obama Learned to Love the Bomb: The president's budget boosts spending on our atomic arsenal while cutting money to stop the spread of nukes.
posted by homunculus at 6:13 PM on May 2, 2013

While under interrogation the militants have declined to provide any information on further attacks.

Normally militants aren't pacifists. Just saying.
posted by hoyland at 8:07 PM on May 2, 2013

Pacifism - all joking aside - can be creatively interpreted to include violence in the service of peace; there's also situational pacifism, where people obstruct a particular conflict even though they'd actually be militants under other circumstances. Think of the WW2 Communists in the USA and UK before Hitler attacked Stalin; it was a bad war before then, but after circumstances changed ...

In this case, sure, they're pacifists, and because they appear to have surrendered when they met the security guard there's no "what if" you can ask about them resorting to situational violence. The object of my exercise was really to show what an unsympathetic report might look like, because the many of the facts that charm us in this account would be alarming if we were talking about Moslems rather than Quakers - even if we were still talking about pacifists.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:38 PM on May 2, 2013

That sort of "But what if it were the same, but different?" thing is sort of a weird gotcha game a lot of the time, though. I mean if you have some actual parallel examples--here are Muslim pacifists who were treated appallingly even though they were basically doing civil disobedience and the media reported on it totally differently--please bring it on and we can talk about it. Otherwise it's just basically seeming to try to shift the topic of this thread into the topic that you'd rather talk about.
posted by jessamyn at 9:15 PM on May 2, 2013 [3 favorites]

I'm surprised that lethal force wasn't allowed at that facility, though I admit I'm not very familiar with the details of what goes on there.
posted by InsertNiftyNameHere at 9:31 PM on May 2, 2013

Jessamyn, I don't actually want people breaking into military bases, even if they're pacifists. The problem with the current story is that it comes with a particular cultural context and the natural response is "She's an 80 year old Quaker nun, lol!" Well, that shouldn't give her a pass unless we're going to privilege religious fanatics who are Quakers over other religious fanatics; and the fact that someone ostensibly subscribes to pacifist beliefs doesn't mean that they won't resort to violence or, indeed, have a larger agenda. That's why I gave examples of "bad pacifists", not because I have anything against Quakers or Sri Lankan Buddhists.
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:56 PM on May 2, 2013

For your information, Joe in Australia, there are no Quaker nuns, and not one of these three people is identified as a Quaker. Perhaps you should read the article.
posted by mareli at 4:49 AM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

That's why I gave examples of "bad pacifists", not because I have anything against Quakers or Sri Lankan Buddhists.

Except your examples were non-examples. That article you linked doesn't say what you want it to say--there are surely Buddhist pacifists, but not all Buddhists are pacifists and monks have been involved in war for centuries. Selective opposition to war generally isn't pacifism. (I say generally because perhaps we can construct an exception.) Just war theory isn't pacifism, for example. The Catholic Church occasionally speaks on the justness of some war or other, but no one is going to confuse Catholicism with a peace church. (Though, of course, there are Catholic pacifists, we're even talking about some, though I suppose there are people involved in the Catholic Worker Movement who aren't Catholic. It's a good bet the nun's Catholic.) Socialist and communist objections to some specific war aren't framed as being about war as a concept, they're framed as war being fought for the benefit of the rich. Heck, you can object to virtually every war imaginable and still not be a pacifist. That's how Jehovah's Witnesses end up as the most imprisoned group of conscientious objectors--they're not pacifists, but they'll object to participation in any war that presents itself.
posted by hoyland at 7:18 AM on May 3, 2013

If Al-Qaeda-sympathetic terrorists, or Timothy McVeigh-style domestic terrorists, or really any terrorists shifted their tactics to those of pacifist Quakers, I'd be fucking ecstatic.

Instead of flying planes into buildings, what if they themselves on fire in the lobby of the WTC to protest the injustices done by Americans to Muslims? Instead of shoe bombs, truck bombs, fertilizer bombs in Times Square, and pressure cookers filled with nails, what if they broke into military facilities and smeared blood on the walls to point out how American military force is used to subjugate the Middle East. Instead of blowing up or flying planes into federal buildings, what about hunger strikes while chained to the front door of the IRS HQ?

Yeah, it would be just awful if terrorists shifted from mass murder to pacifist demonstrations. I'd be so afraid of those pacifist terrorists and their abstention from killing people. Better lock up these Quakers so nobody gets any ideas.
posted by daveliepmann at 7:21 AM on May 3, 2013 [2 favorites]

Well, that shouldn't give her a pass unless we're going to privilege religious fanatics who are Quakers over other religious fanatics;

I... just..... dude. Have you ever met a Quaker? I've heard us described as a whoooole lot of things, but... um. Fanatics is certainly a new one.

the fact that someone ostensibly subscribes to pacifist beliefs doesn't mean that they won't resort to violence

Actually, that's exactly what it means, and if you're questioning pacifists' commitment I would direct you to the Quaker and other pacifist medics in WW2 who refused to go armed, even under fire, in the Pacific Theatre, when medics were specifically being targeted. And who refused to serve as medics in the Western Theatre unless they were allowed to treat Axis troops with the same resources that they were given for Allied troops. Look, man, I don't know what your larger agenda is in playing these poorly-designed "but what if" games, but pacifists are, by definition, not a violent threat. Some Quakers are still out there dying for those beliefs.

Although, for the record, not all Quakers are pacifists. I, for instance, am not a pacifist, although I do hold to the Quaker tradition of peace. The nice thing about being Quaker is that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. (When I was boxing and doing martial arts, my friends used to joke that I put the "fist" in "pacifist.")
posted by WidgetAlley at 10:35 AM on May 3, 2013 [6 favorites]

From the article: "a crucial facility in this nuclear enterprise `wasn’t even nun-proofed, much less terrorist-proofed,' as a Tennessee congressman would put it in a February hearing on the break-in, which shut down Y-12 site operations for two weeks.

"This is how Congress describes the intrusion and fallout: `Embarrassing.' `Astonishing.' `Unprecedented.'

Embarrassing, astonishing, yes, but not unprecedented. The peace activists have been doing this for years. The article mentions, or I recall additional astonishing and embarrassing breakins at the Bangor/Trident Nuclear Sub base in western Washington a few years back, one at Rocky Flats in Colorado, and one in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

Here are the sentences that the Bangor 5 received a couple of years ago. Sister Anne died last fall here in Redwood City, amazingly, to those who knew her, of cancer, not by Israeli tank shelling or enraged Military Police fire, or whatever else.

This trial is not going to go well; the judge issued a gag order last week, preventing the defendants from discussing in front of the jury their theories of defense (international law, necessity, Nuremberg principles, etc.). It seems to me that the right to a trial by jury in which you can't make a free defense isn't worth much. Here's the Plowshares Blog/Web Site for more detail.

I'm going to order some Father Bix Anti-Nuke Sunflower Seeds now. Oh look, there's a Father Bix action figure too.
posted by Hello Dad, I'm in Jail at 1:49 PM on May 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

The jury is there as a trier of fact (Did the accused do such-and-such?). They are not there to rule on matters of law ("What are the legal elements of this crime, or this defense?") When the defense raises theories in front of the jury it's basically an attempt to get the jury to accept the defense's theory about the law. Taken to extremes, this is jury nullification: the idea that juries should falsely determine the facts in order to get the result they want. This sounds like a good thing when it's used to acquit an attractive defendant, but historically it has usually been used to exonerate lynchers and wife-murderers.

We (mostly) live in democracies and where the law is unjust we have the ability to change it. It is generally better for everyone to be judged according to equable and public laws and not whether the jury feels some personal sympathy for an individual defendant.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:02 PM on May 4, 2013

Joe, my understanding of jury nullification is not that it's based on "false determination of facts", but rather the refusal to apply a particular law in situations they deem to be inappropriate.

We (mostly) live in democracies and where the law is unjust we have the ability to change it.

Yeah, people change the law by following the law. Remember how the civil rights movement didn't need to get themselves arrested to make their point? Click, control-f, type in "arrest". Not to mention the fact that they're not trying to change the law, they're trying to change our national defense war policy, and the problem with changing national war policy is that you need to join the military or the DOD or somesuch, wherein your advancement is pretty clearly predicated on advancing the aims these guys are working against.

I wouldn't have a problem with these guys being put in jail for a year after getting their day in court. But to me, a life sentence on a "sabotage" charge doesn't hold water, and the judge's gag order sounds fishy. (Then again, I'm no lawyer.)
posted by daveliepmann at 5:13 PM on May 4, 2013 [2 favorites]

It's not jury nullification when a jury refuses to make a finding. That's just a mistrial, which happens all the time. Jury nullification occurs when a jury makes a finding that is inconsistent with the known facts. This is sometimes in the defendant's favor, sometimes to the defendant's detriment, but I think it's generally a bad thing even though it may create a good outcome in a specific case.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:06 AM on May 5, 2013

They got convicted.
posted by mareli at 8:39 AM on May 10, 2013

An elderly nun and two other peace activists will be sentenced in September on their convictions for damaging a Tennessee defense facility where enriched uranium for nuclear bombs is stored
posted by homunculus at 1:08 PM on May 10, 2013