WILPFers Join Dozens of Supporters at Kings Bay Plowshares Trial

From left, Kings Bay Plowshares defendants Martha Hennessey, a friend standing in for Steve Kelly, Mark Colville, Clare Grady, Carmen Trotta, Patrick O’Neill, and Elizabeth McAlister, stand outside the Glynn County Courthouse in Georgia on October 24 after they are found guilty on all four counts. Father Kelly is still incarcerated because he refuses to cooperate with conditions for release, and was on probation for a previous Plowshares action when he entered Kings Bay. All photos by Ellen Thomas.

By Ellen Thomas
Co-chair, Disarm/End Wars

WILPF members Megan Rice, Ellen Barfield, Marge Van Cleef and her partner Bill Dyson, and Ellen Thomas have recently returned from a week-long gathering of Kings Bay Plowshares supporters to support the seven Catholic workers during their trial. Known as the “Kings Bay Plowshares 7,” they entered the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base in St. Mary’s, Georgia, on April 4, 2018, with hammers, chisels, “crime scene” tape, washable paint, and defendant Elizabeth McAlister’s blood in a baby bottle for pouring on the logo of the Trident submarine. Kings Bay is the US Navy’s port for Trident submarines and the largest nuclear submarine base in the world.

This symbolic Plowshares action of “beating swords into plowshares” was to call attention to the 1,152 nuclear warheads on the six Trident submarines based in Kings Bay, each about 30 times the explosive force as the Hiroshima bomb. 

The defendants—Elizabeth McAlister, Clare Grady, Martha Hennessey, Patrick O’Neill , Steve Kelly, Carmen Trotta, and Mark Colville—have already spent  up to 18 months in Glynn County, Georgia, jail or on house arrest. On October 24, 2019, they all were convicted of three felonies and one misdemeanor (conspiracy, depredation of government property, destruction of government property, and trespassing), which could mean over 20 years in federal prison. They will probably be sentenced after Christmas.

View a slideshow of pictures I took during the week here.

Detailed notes on the trial were taken by Ralph Hutchison, Chairman of the Alliance for Nuclear Accountability’s Board of Directors, and you can read them, and see more of my photos, here.

I videotaped the defendants speaking at the Brunswick, Georgia, Festival of Hope on Sunday, October 20, the evening before their trial began, and I have also posted a talk delivered on October 22 by Art Laffin of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker Movement in Washington, DC, who shared the history of the Plowshares movement.

You can keep up with what is happening on the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 home page and Facebook page, where you will find actions you can take to support them. Please consider doing something to support these brave activists. One action they recommend is to send op-eds to local papers.