A Biblical “Remnant” Cries the Beloved Country
BREAKING: Kings Bay Plowshares 7 Found Guilty on All Counts
kingsbayplowshares7.org
October 24, 2019
This is a breaking news update; more coming…
BRUNSWICK, GA – More than 18 months after they snuck onto the site of one of the largest known collections of nuclear weaponry in the world, a jury found the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 guilty of all four of the charges brought against them.
The defendants face more than 20 years in prison for destruction and depredation of government property in excess of $1,000, trespassing, and conspiracy.
“The Pentagon has many installations – and we just walked out of one of them,” Mark Colville said outside the courthouse. “It’s a place where they weaponize the law. And they wield it mostly against the poor, the people who have all the red lined neighborhoods in this county know that very well. ***
“And once in a while the people who are privileged like us get a taste of it. And when we do we should hear the word guilty as a blessing on us because it gives us an opportunity to stand with people who hear guilty all the time every day.”
The seven expect to be sentenced in 60 to 90 days. Until then, six of them have been released under bond conditions each had prior to trial.
Late at night on April 4, 2018 Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessy, Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J., Elizabeth McAlister, Patrick O’Neill, and Carmen Trotta used a bolt cutter to enter a remote gate at Naval Base Kings Bay in St. Mary’s GA. They walked two miles through swamp and brush. They then split into three groups and prayed, poured blood, spray painted messages against nuclear weapons, hammered on parts of a shrine to nuclear missiles, hung banners, and waited to be arrested.
During the course of the trial, which began Monday morning, the defendants and their supporters had expressed pleasure with the unexpected amount of information they had been able to provide to the jury about their reasons for undertaking their protest. Federal Judge Lisa Godbey Wood had issued an order late last Friday night restricting any evidence or testimony having to do with a necessity defense, international law and treaties restricting nuclear weaponry, and religious and moral reasons.
“I really think that the verdict was, frankly, reactionary,” Trotta told supporters outside the courthouse. “They (the jurors) heard a lot. The judge allowed them to hear a lot. And it’s a little frightening that nuclear weapons could be hidden in plain sight. We have to understand that we are a remnant.… We remain a remnant of the spirit that I think was stronger in our country at other periods on time.
“But we all know which way the wind is blowing. There’s the Black Lives Matter movement. There’s the Extinction Rebellion. There’s the Me Too movement. There’s an activist community waiting just behind us.”
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*** Ray has been arrested and jailed with Mark Colville in Syracuse, witnessing against the death-dealing done at the drone base there. Mark and his wife founded the Amistad Catholic Worker community and house of hospitality in New Haven, Connecticut (amistadcw.wordpress.com), where they live with others dedicated to the daily practice of the Works of Mercy, prayer, nonviolence, environmental justice and promoting human rights and dignity for all people.
Mark has warned, “We stand poised to murder our own children, for no other reason than to preserve our nation’s dominance in the world. This is the definition of idolatry. This is the definition of insanity.” Mark and his Plowshare 7 companions keep reminding us of the warning that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. issued in 1968: “The ultimate logic of racism is genocide.”
It IS all connected. Ray is reminded of the letter James Baldwin sent to Angela Davis after seeing her on the cover of Newsweek, under arrest and chained. (See: https://raymcgovern.com/2019/01/18/james-baldwins-letter-to-angela-davis/ .) White supremacy still plays a disguised but major role in many of the hideous crimes of Empire.