Global Petition to Drop the Charges
(The petition was delivered to the Department of Justice before the trial but you can still sign to show support, and you’ll be added to the mailing list.)
See the list of more than 100 distinguished signers.
CLICK TO JOIN THESE THESE SIGNERS OF THE PETITION
This is an urgent request that you join distinguished citizens of the world including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, other Nobel laureates and many others by signing our global petition to dismiss all charges against the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7). They face years in prison for exposing illegal and immoral nuclear weapons that threaten all life on Earth. The seven nonviolently and symbolically disarmed the Trident nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay, GA on April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (View KBP7 reading their statement here.)
This petition is also a plea for us all to be involved in rebuilding the anti-nuclear weapons movement that helped disarm the world’s nuclear arsenals from 90,000 down to 15,000 weapons in the 1980s. The KBP7 trial is expected to begin this summer in GA. Time is short. Please sign the petition and visit kingsbayplowshares7.org. Help KBP7 by forwarding their petition to your friends, to lists, and post it on social media.
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 have offered us their prophetic witness. Now it’s up to us!
In peace and solidarity,
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Support Committee
Petition:
TO: US ATTORNEY GENERAL WILLIAM BARR
The Kings Bay Plowshares 7 (KBP7) are facing a federal trial and years in prison for having confronted a system in which nuclear weapons that can destroy all creation are accepted as a normal, even inevitable, part of life.
This threat, and the lack of public outrage over it, compelled seven principled activists (Elizabeth McAlister, Stephen Kelly S.J., Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, Patrick O’Neill, Mark Colville, and Carmen Trotta) to enter Naval Station Kings Bay Submarine Base in Georgia on the 50th anniversary of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Kings Bay is homeport to six U.S. nuclear ballistic missile submarines carrying hundreds of nuclear weapons, many of which have up to 30 times the explosive power of the bomb that destroyed the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. Following the Prophet Isaiah’s Biblical command to “beat swords into plowshares” (Is. 2:4), the seven were also acting legally to uphold anti-nuclear treaties as the supreme law of the land according to the U.S. Constitution, international law manifested in the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg principles. By their actions at Kings Bay, they sought to draw attention to the urgency of withdrawing consent and dismantling what Dr. King called the “triple evils” of racism, excessive materialism, and militarism. The KBP7’s action statement reads: “Nuclear weapons eviscerate the rule of law, enforce white supremacy, perpetuate endless war and environmental destruction, and ensure impunity for all manner of crimes against humanity. Dr. King said, ‘The ultimate logic of racism is genocide.’ We say, ‘The ultimate logic of Trident is omnicide. A just and peaceful world is possible when we join prayers with action. Swords into Plowshares!’”
We who share the moral vision of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 proclaim our support for their courage and sustained sacrifice and call for the immediate dismissal of all charges against them. The defendants invite us to act creatively. They invite us to join global coalitions working to promote governments’ adherence to, and full implementation of, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. They also invite us to participate in campaigns for divestment from nuclear weapons as complementary efforts towards the realization of a world free of nuclear weapons.
Sincerely,
Notable Signers from Around the World
Ray Acheson – Director, Reaching Critical Will, Woman’s International League of Peace and
Freedom’s Disarmament Program (WILPF)
Christine Ahn – Founder, Exec. Dir., Women Cross DMZ
Robert Aldridge – Former design engineer, Lockheed. Editor of the Trident Resisters’ Handbook
Anthony Arnove – Author, The People Speaks
Huwaida Arraf – Atty. Founder, International Solidarity Organization (ISO) in Palestine
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi – PLO Executive Committee Member, Member of Palestinian Legislative Council and Head of the PLO Department of Culture and Information, activist, and scholar, Exec. Dir. of MIFTAH, the first woman elected to the Palestinian National Council, awarded the Sydney Peace Prize, 2003
Harold W. Attridge – Sterling Professor of Divinity; Dean of the Yale Divinity School, 2002-2012
John Bach – Quaker Chaplain, Harvard University
Rev. Dr. William Barber – Poor Peoples Campaign Co-Leader
Medea Benjamin – Code Pink Co-founder, author, global activist
Ruth Benn – Co-Founder, NYC War Tax Resistance
Phyllis Bennis – Fellow, Institute for Policy Studies
Most Reverend John Michael Botean – Bishop, Romanian Catholic Diocese, Canton, Ohio
Prof. Francis Boyle – Author, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law
Dr. Helen Caldicott – Australian physician, author, and anti-nuclear advocate, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
Sr. Simone Campbell, SSS, JD – Executive Director, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice
Noam Chomsky – Author, Linguist, Historian, Social & Political Commentator
Rosa Clemente – Puerto Rican Activist, 2008 Green Party Vice-Presidential Candidate
Jeremiah Coffey – Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Albertus Magnus College, New Haven
Fr. Robert A Cushing – Pastor, St. Joseph Catholic Church, Waycross, GA
Ben Cohen – Co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream
Gerry Condon – President, Veterans for Peace
Dr. Angela Davis – Global human-rights activist, feminist, prison abolitionist, scholar, and author.
Miriam Dean-Otting – Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies, Kenyon College
Terri Delahanty Many Feathers, Cree and Ojibwa, Ordained Minister; Board of Trustees @ Institute of American Indian Studies in Washington Depot, Ct., & Steering Committee for creating a Commission on American Indian affairs in CT. Founding member of the Board for Women In The Spirit (WitS); Planning committee for the Wisdom Keepers Conference in Kansas. Terri facilitates workshops on ‘Meeting Death.”
James W. Douglass – Mary’s House, Birmingham Alabama; co-founder of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, Author
Shelley M. Douglass – Mary’s House, Birmingham Alabama; co-founder of Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
Gwen Dubois, M.D. – Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Baltimore
Leonard Eiger – Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action
Daniel Ellsberg – Whistleblower, released the Pentagon Papers and authored the book The Doomsday Machine; Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner
Robert Ellsberg – Publisher, Orbis Books
Jodie Evans – Code Pink Co-founder
Beatrice Fihn – Nobel Peace laureate, Executive Director of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Terry Fitzgerald, M.D. – Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Baltimore
Jim Forest – Author of books on Thomas Merton and Daniel Berrigan
Jeff Furman – President of Ben & Jerry’s
Sr. Carol Gilbert OP – Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares, Jonah House Community, Baltimore, D.C. Catholic Worker
Caroline Gilbert – Co-Chair, Christian Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, (CND) United Kingdom
Commander Robert D. Green – Royal Navy (Ret’d), Author of Security Without Nuclear Deterrence, Co-Director of Disarmament & Security Centre, New Zealand.
Ismael Guadalupe – Leader of the Vieques, Puerto Rican Peace Movement to remove the U.S. Navy after 60 years of bombing practice
Bishop Thomas Gumbleton – Archdiocese of Detroit
William D. Hartung – Director of the Arms & Security Project at the Center for International Policy
Stanley Hauerwas – Duke Divinity School, Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law
Dr. Ira Helfand – Two-time Nobel Peace Laureate on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and ICAN (International Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons)
Chris Hedges – Pulitzer Prize Winning Author & Professor
Dahr Jamail – Reporter, author of The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption; The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan and Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq. War correspondent reporting from Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Turkey for 10 years, winner of the Izzy Award and the Martha Gellhorn Award for Investigative Journalism, among other awards.
Tito Kayak (aka Alberto DeJesus) – Puerto Rican Activist, Actions: Climbed the Statue of Liberty for Vieques & P.R., and climbed an Israeli Surveillance Tower, in Bil’in, Palestine
Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence, Nobel Peace Prize Nominee
Paul Kennedy – J. Richardson Dilworth Professor of History, Yale University
Bill Kidd – MSP, Member of Scottish Parliament, Co-President of the Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Scotland
David Krieger -President, Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Bishop Joseph Kopacz – Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi
Sharon M.K. Kugler, Yale University Chaplain
Peter Kuznik – Director, Nuclear Studies Institute, American University
Brian Larkin – Edinburgh Peace and Justice Centre, Scotland
Annie Leonard – Executive Director of Greenpeace, USA
Robert J. Lifton – Psychiatrist & Author, with a focus on psychological effects of wars and political violence
Betty Lyons – President, American Indian Law Alliance
Mairead Maguire – Nobel Peace Laureate, Northern Ireland, Co-Founder, Women for Peace
Fr. James Martin – Editor-at-large, America magazine, Consultant to the Vatican’s Secretariat for Communications
George E. McCarthy – NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology, Kenyon College
Louise McDonald – Mohawk from Akwesasne, Condoled Bear Clan Mother of the Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs
Ray McGovern – CIA analyst for 27 years
Michael McPhearson – Executive Director Veterans For Peace
Rosa Meneses Albizu-Campos, Esq., Granddaughter of Pedro Albizu-Campos, famed leader of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Delegate abroad of the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico (PNPR) / Liberating Movement.
Ched Meyers – Bartimaeus Cooperative Ministries, Author
Anuradha Mittal -Founder and Executive Director, The Oakland Institute
Michael Moore – Filmmaker/ Actor / Activist
Rosemarie Pace, EdD – Director, Pax Christi Metro New York
Bishop Richard Pates – Diocese of Des Moines
Sr. Ardeth Platte OP – Sacred Earth and Space Plowshares
Lord Martin Rees – Royal Society, leading astrophysicist. Senior figure in UK science
Royal Rhodes – Donald L. Rogan Professor Emeritus, Kenyon College
Sr. Megan Rice- Transform Now Plowshares
Oscar Lopez Rivera – Puerto Rican Ex-Political Prisoner and Independendista, freed after 32 yrs,
Arturo Rodriguez – Past President, United Farm Workers Union
Bishop Peter A. Rosazza – Bloomfield, CT
Dr. Janet K. Ruffing, RSM – Professor in the Practice of Spirituality and Ministerial Leadership, Yale Divinity School
Elaine Scarry – Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value, Harvard University, author of Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom
Monsignor Gerard G. Schmitz – Chaplain, St. Thomas More Catholic Center, Yale University
Susan M. Schnall – President, NYC Chapter, Veterans For Peace
Andy Shallal – an Iraqi-American artist, activist, owner of Wash. D.C.’s Busboys and Poets Café.
Martin Sheen – Actor / Peace Activist
Seth Shelden, Esq. – United Nations Liaison, ICAN
Alice Slater – UN Representative for Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
Paul Stookey – Musician and activist, member of Peter, Paul, & Mary
Bishop John Stowe, O.F.M. Conv. – Bishop of Lexington, Episcopal President of Pax Christi USA
Rev. Dr. Frederick J Streets – Senior Pastor, Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ, New Haven, CT; former Yale University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis – Poor Peoples Campaign Co-Leader
Mary Evelyn Tucker – Senior Lecturer and Senior Research Scholar in Religion and Ecology, Yale University
Dr. James Turner – 1969 Founder of the Africana Research and Studies Program at Cornell University
Dean Janice Turner – Cornell, Assistant Dean School of Arts and Science, retired
Archbishop Desmond Tutu – Nobel Peace Prize Recipient, Outspoken Critic Of Apartheid, & The First Black Anglican Archbishop Of South Africa.
Frank Velgara – NYC -Vieques Solidarity, ProLibertad, Jericho Project, Al Awda
Timmon Wallis – Executive Director, NuclearBan.us, Author of Disarming the Nuclear Argument
Rabbi Brian Walt – Founder of Rabbis for Human Rights
Dr. Cornel West – Harvard Divinity School, philosopher, political activist, social critic, author, and public intellectual.
Tomiko Morimoto West – Hibakusha (Hiroshima survivor)
Agnes Williams LMSC – Coordinator of Indigenous Women’s Initiatives, Seneca Nation
Jody Williams – Nobel Peace Laureate, Founder of Int’l Campaign to Ban Landmines
Kayeneshenh Paul Williams, Esq. – Onondaga Nation at Six Nations Territory, member of the Haudenosaunee External Relations Committee, Author, Kayanerenkó:wa: The Great Law of Peace
Col. Ann Wright – US Army Colonel (Ret) Peace Activist, VFP, Code Pink