“Do you swear/affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you [God]?”, Dennis Apel was asked as he took the stand in Federal court for his witness at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Dennis looked to the judge and said, “If I am allowed to, I will, believe me, tell all the truth…” The torch of truth-telling is then passed on to the next set of nuclear resisters. They in turn give to the next. So we await, from the bowels of our southeast Georgia keep, the next of the three phases (action, trial, prison) of the Kings Bay Plowshares witness.

The second phase of our plowshare’s witness, inspired by the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s assassination, is to figuratively hammer the Judiciary… in an attempt to convert the courts (plural) from legitimizer of nuclear holocaust sword to abolition plowshare. Our instrument, all self-righteousness aside, is what usually becomes the first casualty in the courtroom – truth. That’s the paradox, the torch passed on: We cannot shirk nor truncate “all the truth” for it is The witness…

There are many unknowns as this golf-penciled prose is sent off late April (i. e. federal or state jurisdiction), but hammer we will, despite seeming failure.