the narrow way of peace

Today, 14 November 2006, Roman Catholic Priest Fr. Carl Kabat and two veterans, Greg Boertje-Obed and Michael Walli were sentenced at a US Federal Court.

The men, known as the Weapons of Mass Destruction Here Plowshares Clowns, are members of the Loaves and Fishes Community in Duluth which is part of the Catholic Worker tradition.

Their crime was to break into a nuclear weapons facility dressed as clowns, to dent a metal silo lid and to pour on their own blood as a symbol of the futility of nuclear weapons. Here is the story in their own words. Fr Carl has already spent over 16 years of his life in correctional facilities for protests against nuclear facilities.

One cannot help feeling that they have done what we all should have done.

Part of the same community were Dominican Sisters Jackie Hudson, Carol Gilbert and Ardeth Platte, sentenced for a 2002 protest at a nuclear site, gaining the label 'terrorist' from the now infamous ex-president of the National Association of Evangelicals Rev Ted Haggard.

When Ardeth Platte was released from prison, the Denver Post reported it like this:

Ardeth Platte left the Danbury Federal Correctional Institution last week unbowed. She spent more than two years trying to rehabilitate what she considers an immoral system while the system claimed to be trying to rehabilitate her.

Realistically, it was a draw. [Link from Jonah House website.]

The Denver Post is today reporting that the three are defying an order to return to a probation office in Baltimore in order to collect food for poor military families. They say that they refuse to pay the fine in cash as it will be spent on war.

One fantastic line from that report:

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Robert Blackburn refused their offer of canned goods, as did Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Brown, who prosecuted them. [link from the Denver Post]

Please take time to look upon the face of Sister Ardeth Platt aged 70, who has chosen the hard path of pacifism and prison over the dignity of her age, and ask yourself whether these are the actions of a terrorist.