In The Media
RNS) — For more than 850 days, the Rev. Stephen Kelly, a Jesuit priest, has hunkered down in a south Georgia jail in relative obscurity. On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination, Kelly and I cut a padlock on a perimeter fence gate at Naval Submarine Base Kings…
Read MoreThe New Yorker’s ‘Talk of the Town’ recently reported how, in the depths of the Big Apple’s COVID-19 lockdown, musician David Mansfield discovered a rusted hatch in his overgrown backyard. Prizing it open, he descended a ladder to a nuclear fall-out shelter, a claustrophobic capsule – or “David Bowie tin can” – assembled as “a…
Read MoreInterview with Mark Colville, one of seven Kings Bay Plowshares defendants, conducted by Melinda Tuhus On June 8, 80-year-old peace activist Liz McAllister was sentenced for her part in the Kings Bay Plowshares action on April 4, 2018, in which 7 Catholic activists poured their own blood and hammered on equipment after breaking into the…
Read MoreWhen the Jericho Road Community Health Center asked Martin Gugino to explain why he was a donor, he responded with a passage from the New Testament. “Jesus said to clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty,” he wrote in the Buffalo nonprofit’s newsletter last fall, praising its…
Read More(RNS) — A U.S. District Court judge has sentenced an 80-year-old Catholic peace activist to time already served for trespassing onto the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Marys, Georgia, more than two years ago as part of a symbolic nuclear disarmament action. Elizabeth McAlister, a former nun with the Religious of the Sacred…
Read MoreOne of the seven Catholic peace activists convicted on charges related to entering a naval base in southeastern Georgia and symbolically damaging weapons systems will not return to prison for her role in the protest. Liz McAlister, 80, of New London, Connecticut, was sentenced however, to three years of probation and ordered her to pay…
Read MoreFirst ‘Kings Bay Plowshares’ activist sentenced by Liz Dodd , Ellen Teague, The Tablet, June 8, 2020
As sentencing began in the cases of seven Catholic peace activists who were convicted for acts of civil disobedience during a protest against nuclear weapons in the USA, more Religious communities in England and Wales have pledged to consider divesting from companies that produce nuclear weapons. On Monday Elizabeth McAlister, a Catholic peace activist, was…
Read MoreAn 80-year-old Connecticut woman was sentenced to time served for her role in the April 2018 incident in which a group known as the Plowshares broke into and vandalized Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay in Camden County, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Elizabeth McAlister had served 17 months since her arrest along with six…
Read MoreBeating Swords to Plowshares by Kathy Kelly Inscribed on a wall across from the United Nations in New York City are ancient words of incalculable yearning: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.” –…
Read MoreMartha Hennessey is a longtime anti-war activist and the granddaughter of Dorothy Day, the co-founder of the Catholic Worker Movement. She is 62, a retired occupational therapist, and grandmother of eight. She has been arrested and imprisoned protesting nuclear power, war, the use of drones, the torture of prisoners in Guantanamo and other prisons, and…
Read More