Criminalized for Obeying a Higher Law

On September 9, 1980, eight peacemakers, known collectively as the Plowshares Eight, entered the General Electric facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where vital components of Minuteman III nuclear missiles were manufactured. The eight, among whom were a number of prominent Catholic anti-war activists, were Father Daniel Berrigan, his brother Philip Berrigan, Sister Anne Montgomery, Father Carl Kabat, Molly Rush, John Schuchardt, Elmer Maas, and Dean Hammer. Motivated by their faith, they enacted the biblical prophecies of Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 to “beat swords into plowshares,” hammering on two nose cones and pouring blood on technical documents. The eight were subsequently arrested and tried by a jury. All were convicted and sentenced to prison terms ranging from eighteen months to ten years. After a series of appeals that lasted a decade, they were resentenced to time served—from several days to seventeen and a half months.

Inspired by the Plowshares Eight action, many others, including me, have entered weapons facilities and military bases and installations (including so-called “deadly-force zones”) and, with hammers and other tools, symbolically—and in some cases literally—disarmed components of nuclear weapons systems as well as conventional weapons. Since 1980 more than 200 people from a variety of backgrounds, most acting in community but several acting alone, have participated in over 100 such Plowshares and related disarmament actions. Some of these peacemakers have done multiple Plowshares actions. Fifty-eight of these actions have taken place in the United States and forty-three have been international actions, which have occurred in Australia, Germany, Holland, Sweden, New Zealand, Scotland, England, and Italy. Twenty-one were directed at the first-strike Trident nuclear submarine program.

The Plowshares movement situates itself within both longstanding biblical and U.S. traditions of nonviolent resistance and dissent to oppression and injustice. Throughout those histories, people who have resisted state violence, racism, and social injustice—and who have advocated for change and accountability—have often faced harsh legal reprisals, including long prison sentences. Some have even been killed, such as Martin Luther King, Jr. History is replete with numerous examples of how meaningful changes have often occurred because of such courageous sacrifices in pursuit of civil and human rights, peace, and social transformation.

In this article I would like to focus on the sharp contrast between how nuclear weapons, despite being banned under international law, remain the cornerstone of U.S. military policy, while acts of nonviolent civil resistance, such as Plowshares actions, have been essentially criminalized. For those in the Plowshares movement, this points toward the fundamental arbitrariness of U.S. law and how it stands in direct opposition to what we know, from our biblical faith and morality, is necessary for enhancing life.

“The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our mode of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” —Albert Einstein

With the development of the atomic bomb, Einstein knew that, for the first time in history, humans possessed the capability to destroy the world. He issued an urgent, unqualified call for nuclear disarmament. For eighty years, the United States and other nuclear nations have ignored his advice, and that of many others. Thus, the world spirals toward catastrophe.

The United States is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons, having committed the unspeakable war crime of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and thus ushering in the Nuclear Age. Rather than acknowledging and repenting for this crime, making reparations to the victims, and promising to eradicate its nuclear program, the U.S. government made nuclear weapons the “foundation” of its military and foreign policy. This policy holds that the United States must be prepared to use any military means necessary, including nuclear weapons, to protect and ensure its “vital” national security and geopolitical interests. According to peace activist and author Joseph Gerson, the United States has threatened to use nuclear weapons against adversaries an estimated thirty times to bolster U.S. aims. The U.S. government has also refused to adopt a “no first-use” nuclear policy, declaring it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the case of conflict. So long as the United States possesses nuclear weapons and maintains its intention to be the world’s preeminent superpower dominating both Earth and space, it will remain an incalculable threat to planetary survival.

That is the existential threat that Plowshares actions seek to expose, resist, and change. In my view, the basic hope of Plowshares actions is to communicate—from the moment of entry into a plant or base, and throughout the court process and prison witness—an underlying faith that the power of nonviolent love can overcome the forces of violence. The actions are grounded in a reverence for all life and creation, and an acceptance of personal responsibility for the dismantling of the weapons. They seek a spiritual conversion of the hearts of witnesses to the ways of justice and reconciliation. Plowshares participants believe that the physical dismantling of the weapon and the personal disarmament of the heart are reciprocal—in Philip Berrigan’s words, “We try to disarm ourselves by disarming the weapons.”

Thus, the intent of Plowshares actions is to uphold God’s law—“Thou shalt not kill”—and enforce international laws that prohibit crimes against humanity.

Seeking to unveil the violence, secrecy, and idolatry of the national nuclear security state, some Plowshares defendants have tried to present a “justification” or “necessity” defense. During their defense they have tried to show, through personal and expert witness testimony, that their actions were morally and legally justified. Courts have shown their complicity in protecting the interests of the government and arms manufacturers by repeatedly disallowing this defense.

Some Plowshares groups have also presented a defense asserting that a state religion of “nuclearism” has been established—which is unconstitutional, a violation of the First Amendment. Moreover, nuclearism is in violation of God’s law, which forbids the worship of “gods of metal.” Plowshares defendants have thus moved to dismiss charges brought against them by contending that the law, as applied in these cases, is being used to protect the unconstitutional establishment of a state religion. Such motions have been consistently denied. The Kings Bay Plowshares 7, who carried out the most recent plowshares action, in 2018, similarly introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as part of their defense. But this defense, too, was denied.

With several exceptions, Plowshares activists have been prosecuted for their actions. While most have pleaded not guilty and have gone to trial, several have opted to plead “no contest” or “guilty” to charges brought against them. These charges have included trespass, destruction of government property, conspiracy—and, in several cases, injuring, interfering with, or obstructing the national defense, a felony “sabotage” charge. Most of the trials have ended in convictions. However, in 1987, members of the Epiphany Plowshares were tried an unprecedented five times with three trials ending in hung juries and mistrials. There have also been other Plowshares cases where people were not prosecuted, had hung juries, or were found not guilty. Most, though, have been convicted; sentences have ranged from suspended sentences to eighteen years in prison. The average prison sentence has been between one and two years. For trials in the United States, which have occurred in both state and federal courts, most defendants have represented themselves, sometimes with the assistance of legal advisers, while some others have had legal representation.

The trial tactics used by judges and government prosecutors have been extremely repressive. After the Epiphany Plowshares prosecutors failed to generate any convictions during the first three trials, prosecutors filed a pretrial motion calling for the complete prohibition of any arguments suggesting that the defendant’s actions were justified. In the third and fourth attempts to try the Epiphany Plowshares participants, the trial judge, complying with the U.S. prosecutor’s request, imposed a gag order forbidding any mention of God’s law, the Bible, international law, U.S. military intervention in Central America, nuclear weapons, and the poor. For speaking about these subjects, two defendants were given contempt charges and twenty-day jail sentences. In subsequent Plowshares cases, judges have consistently upheld government motions to exclude any affirmative defenses.

I was a defendant in 1982 during the Trident Nein Plowshares trial. The Trident Nein action occurred on July 5, 1982, when nine peacemakers hammered and poured blood on the USS Florida (a Trident ballistic nuclear submarine) and components at General Dynamics Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut. We also spray-painted “USS AUSCHWITZ” on the submarine, poured blood over it, and hung a banner on sonar equipment that said: “TRIDENT A HOLOCAUST–THE OVEN WITHOUT WALLS!”

During this trial, there was an extraordinary exchange with the trial judge, who stated that we defendants may very well be right, the world might be blown up, but the law must still be upheld! I was astonished by this statement. By implication, the judge was clarifying how U.S. law protects nuclear weapons. Thus, in his view, the demands of lawfulness meant we should adhere even if—as he seemed to agree was entirely possible—the execution of those laws would lead to the annihilation of all life on Earth.

I was again charged with crimes when, on September 4, 1989, six peacemakers and I carried out the Thames River Plowshares action at the Naval Underwater Systems Center in New London, Connecticut. We were able to swim and canoe to the docked USS Pennsylvania, the tenth Trident nuclear sub (then still undergoing sea trials), and hammered and poured blood on the hull. Three from our group, including me, beached our canoe on the stern end of the submarine and climbed up. Kneeling on the submarine’s hull, we read aloud the fifteenth chapter of John’s Gospel—where Jesus declares, “This is my commandment, that you should love one another”—and prayed for the abolition of nuclear weapons. As military police used fire hoses from a short distance away to try to get us to leave, I made an appeal to them to become conscientious objectors. We were soon apprehended by the U.S. Coast Guard.

From aboard the nuclear submarine, the most destructive weapon on Earth, I believed then, as I do now, that if people have the faith that disarmament is possible, and act on that faith, it can occur. I, along with other Plowshares activists and peacemakers, know this can happen because we were able to literally begin the process of true disarmament.

In 1947 the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created a “Doomsday Clock,” an attempt to calculate how close we are to global nuclear catastrophe. In January of this year, the Doomsday Clock was set at eighty-nine seconds to midnight, the closest to midnight—annihilation—as the clock has been during its seventy-eight-year history. Factors include nuclear weapons, climate crisis, artificial intelligence, infectious diseases, and conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Despite this warning, the Pentagon remains committed to an estimated $1.7 trillion thirty-year complete rebuild of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. These exorbitant nuclear expenditures, along with a military budget now expected to reach $1 trillion this year, must be redirected to meet urgent human needs.

In 2017 the United Nations adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), banning the use, possession, testing, and transfer of nuclear weapons under international law. Its ratification was thanks in large part to the fundamental and tireless work of the hibakusha (被爆者), those who survived the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. Their organization, Nihon Hidankyō (日本被団協), received the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize. Another major driver of the TPNW’s adoption was the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), recipient of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, which was formed through collaborations led by the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. ICAN is comprised of over 650 partner organizations in 110 countries. Numerous other peace groups and peacemakers also advocated for and supported the TPNW.

In 2017, the same year as the passage of the TPNW, Pope Francis declared: “Nor can we fail to be genuinely concerned by the catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects of any employment of nuclear devices. If we also take into account the risk of an accidental detonation as a result of error of any kind, the threat of their use, as well as their very possession, is to be firmly condemned.” Two years later, he reaffirmed, “The use of nuclear weapons, as well as their mere possession, is immoral.”

Nuclear weapons are illegal under international law, immoral, and must be abolished now; they are an imminent threat to the continuance of life itself. The mining of nuclear materials, as well as the testing and deployment of nuclear weapons, have desecrated Indigenous lands and the Marshall and South Pacific Islands, have caused incalculable ecological devastation, and have resulted in the early deaths of countless people exposed to nuclear radiation. Their research, production, and deployment are a theft from the poor and a crime against God’s creation, humanity, and future generations. The United States and the other eight nuclear nations must ratify the TPNW, as seventy-three nations already have.

With this article I’ve sought to shine a light on U.S. hypocrisy and lawbreaking: on the one hand, the United States defies international law by possessing weapons that could destroy all of life, while, on the other hand, it uses its own law to penalize people who seek to draw attention to this fact. Anti-war and disarmament activists have been criminalized precisely for adhering to a higher law and for pointing out the United States’ own lawlessness.

The nuclear challenge before us is great but not insurmountable. For with God, and numerous people who are now acting for a disarmed world free of weapons and war, all things are possible! History bears out this truth. Slavery was abolished (though not yet for incarcerated people). Legal segregation ended in the United States. Apartheid ended in South Africa. The Berlin Wall came down. Now is the time to heed the plea of the hibakusha: “Humans cannot coexist with nuclear weapons.” While the prospect for criminalizing acts of civil resistance and dissent for those advocating nuclear abolition will continue, we must act. As Martin Luther King, Jr., exhorts us: “The choice today is . . . either nonviolence or nonexistence.”

_{Image: Burgess Milner / Unsplash}

Contributors

Art Laffin Art Laffin is a member of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C. He has long been active in the faith-based nonviolent movement for peace, social justice, disarmament, and human rights. He has been imprisoned for his involvement in two Plowshares disarmament actions, as well as other nonviolent actions.

Topics

• Law & Policy

Tags

• activism
• criminalization
• criminalizing dissent
• political prisoners